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THE ALPS AND THE RHINE. 



THE ALPS 




AND 



THE RHINE 



A SERIES OF SKETCHES 



BY 



J. T. HEADLEY. 



NEW AND REVISED EDITION. 



NEW YORK: 
BAKER AND SCRIBNER, 

36 PARK ROW AND 145 NASSAU STREET. 

1848. 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1848, by 

BAKER & SCRIBNER, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the 
Southern District of New York. 






THOMAS B. SMITH, STEREOTYPER, 
216 WILLIAM STREET, N. Y. 



S. W. BENEDICT, PRINTER, 
16 SPRUCE STREET. 



TO 

E. C. BENEDICT, ESQ., 

OF NEW YORK, 

T H ESE SKETCHES 

ARE AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED BY 

HIS FRIEND AND RELATIVE, 

THE AUTHOR. 



CONTENTS. 



Introduction, ..••••• 
Chapter I.— Pass of the Simplon, Gorge of Gondo, . 

II. Passes of the Forclaz and Col de Balme, 

HI.— Ascent of the Montanverte, Vale of Chamouni, 
IV. — Pass of the Tete Noire, . . ■ . 

V.— Baths of Leuk, 

IV.— The Castle of Chillon. Geneva. Junction of the Rhone 
- and Arve, ..••••• 

VIT. Freybourg Organ and Bridges. Swiss Peculiarities, 

VIII.— Interlachen, Pass of the Wengern Alp, Byron's Manfred 

IX. The Grand Scheideck : an Avalanche, 

X. — Valley of Meyringen. Pass of Brunig, 
XI.— Suwarrow's Passage of the Pragel, . 
XII.— Macdonald's Pass of the Splugen, . 
XIII.— The Righi Culm, .... 
XIV.— Goldau— Fall of the Rossberg, 
XV.— Avalanches and Glaciers, their Formation 
XVI. — Pasturages, Chalets, and Alpine Passes, 
XVII. — A Farewell to Switzerland — Basle, 
XVIII.— Strasbourg— The Rhine— Frankfort, 
XIX. — A Day in Wiesbaden, 
XX.— Schwalbach and Schlagenbad, 
XXI. — Mayence — The Rhine, . 
XXII. — The Castellated Rhine, . 
XXIII.— The Rhine from Coblentz to Cologne, 
XXIV.— Rhine Wines, Cologne Cathedral, Louvain, Brussels, 
XXV.— Battle-field of Waterloo, 



and Movement 



PAGE 

vii 

1 

7 

13 

19 

23 

26 
33 
39 
46 
51 
55 
60 
70 
76 
81 
86 
90 
94 
99 
106 
111 
115 
121 
126 
131 



INTRODUCTION. 



In the present work I have not designed to make a book 
of travels, but give a series of sketches of the Alpine portion 
of Switzerland, and the scenery along the Rhine. In writing 
of Switzerland, I have omitted almost altogether notices of 
the character of the people, except of those occupying the 
valleys of the Alps. Neither have I spoken of the chief cities 
and towns of the country, except to make a passing remark. 
I excluded all such matter, because I wished, if possible, to 
give a definite idea of the scenery of the Alps. Having an 
unconquerable desire from my boyhood to see the land of 
Tell and Winkelried, I had read everything I could lay hold 
of, that would give me clear conceptions of the wonderful 
scenery it embraces, yet I found that my imagination had 
never approached the reality. 

Hoping to do what others had failed in accomplishing, I 
confess, was the motive in my attempting these sketches. 
It always seemed strange to me, that such marked, stri- 
king features in natural scenery could fail of being caught 
and described. Such bold outlines, and such distinct fig- 
ures, it seemed a mere pastime to reproduce before the eye. 
And even now, of all the distinct things memory recalls, 
none appear more clear and definite than the scenes of 
the Alps. But, notwithstanding all this, I need not add that 
I am as much dissatisfied with my own efforts as with those 
of others. The truth is, the Alps are too striking and grand 



vi INTRODUCTION. 



to be described. We get a definite idea of very few things in 
the world we have never seen, by mere naked details. This 
is especially true of those objects that excite emotion. It is 
by comparing them to more familiar and greater things, that 
we conceive them properly. Indeed, the imagination is gen- 
erally so much weaker than the bodily eye, that exaggeration 
is required to bring up the perceptive faculties to the proper 
point. 

But the Alps have nothing beyond them — nothing greater 
with which to compare them. They alone can illustrate 
themselves. Comparisons diminish them, and figures of 
speech only confuse the mind. This I believe to be the rea- 
son why every one becomes dissatisfied with his own descrip- 
tions. To give lofty conceptions of mountain scenery before, 
he has been accustomed to call it Alpine. The Alps are 
called in to illustrate all other mountains and lofty peaks, and 
hence when he comes to describe the former, he. is at loss for 
metaphors and comparisons. The words grand, awful, sub- 
lime, have been used to describe scenery so far inferior to that 
which now meets his eye, that he would reject them as weak 
and expressionless, were there any others he could employ. 
I have never felt the need of stronger Saxon more than when 
standing amid the chaos of an Alpine abyss, or looking off 
from the summit of an Alpine peak. Like the attempt to ut- 
ter a man's deepest emotions, words for the time shock him. 
I am aware this may be attributed to a sensitive imagination. 
Some may boast that they have stood perfectly tranquil, and 
at their ease in every part of the Alps. I envy not such a man 
his self-possession, nor his tranquil nature. He who can wan- 
der through the Oberland without being profoundly moved, 
and feeling as Coleridge did when he lifted his hymn in the 
vale of Chamouni, need not fear that he will ever be greatly 



INTRODUCTION. vii 



excited, either by the grand or beautiful with which God has 
clothed the world. 

The Rhine I have passed over more hastily, and devoted 
less space to it, because its scenes are more familiar, as well 
as more tame. If I shall add to the reader's conceptions of 
Alpine scenery — give any more vivid ideas of its amazing 
grandeur, more definite outlines to those wonderful forms of 
nature, I shall have accomplished my purpose. My object 
in grouping, as I have, the most remarkable objects together, 
to the exclusion of every thing else, was, if possible, to do 
this. Still they must be seen to be known. 



THE ALPS AND THE RHINE. 



i. 

PASS OF THE SIMPLON, GORGE OF GONDO. 

Coming from the warm air of the South, the first sight of the 
Alps gave a spring to my blood it had not felt for years. Egypt 
and Palestine I had abandoned, and weary and depressed, I turn- 
ed as a last resort to the Alps and their glorious scenery. As I 
came on to Lake Maggiore, I was, as we should say at home, 
" down sick." A severe cold accompanied with fever rendered 

me as indifferent to the scenery the evening I approached as 

if I were on the confines of a desert. But the morning found me 
myself again, and the clear lake coming from under the feet of 
the everlasting Alps, and peeping out into the valley as if to see 
how the plains of Lombardy looked, was as welcome as the face 
of a friend. Born myself amid mountains, I had loved them 
from boyhood. I looked out from our carriage on the Borromean 
Isles, terraced up in the form of a pyramid from the water, with 
their dark fringe of cypresses, without one wish to visit them. I 
did not care whether they were an " espece de creation" or " a 
huge perigord pie stuck round with woodcocks and partridges." 
The soft air revived me, and the breeze that stooped down from 
the snow summits of the Alps, that glittered far up in the clear 
heavens before me, was like a new fountain of blood opened in 
my system. I left the carriage, and wandered off to the quarries 
of pink granite among the mountains. After listening awhile to 
the clink of the miner's hammer, far up on the breast of the rock, 
and gathering a few crystals, I returned to the lake, and passing 
directly underneath a mountain of stone, from whose summit 



DOMO D'OSOLA. 



workmen were blasting rocks that fell with the noise of thunder 
into the road, sending their huge fragments over into the lake, — 
rejoined the carriage at a dirty inn. The crystal-like clearness 
of the water, and the mountains around, reminded me of the wild- 
er parts of the Delaware, where I had hooked many a trout, and 
thinking they ought to be found on such gravelly bottoms, I en- 
quired of the landlord if I could have trout for dinner. He re- 
plied yes, and when the speckled fish was brought on the table, it 
was like the sight of an old friend. The flesh, however, did not 
have the freshness and flavour of those caught in our mountain 
streams. It may have been owing to the cooking, probably it was. 
After dinner we started up the narrow valley that leads to the 
foot of the Simplon. It was as lovely an afternoon as ever made 
the earth smile. Gray, barren pyramids of rock pierced the clear 
heavens on either side, while the deep quiet of the valley was 
broken only by the brawling streamlet that sparkled through it. 
Here and there was a small meadow spot from which the dwarf- 
ish peasantry were harvesting the hay. Women performed the 
office of team and cart. A huge basket that would hold nearly 
as much as an ordinary hay-cock, was filled, when a woman in- 
serted herself into straps fastened to it, and taking it on her back; 
walked away with the load. ■ 

As it takes twelve good hours to cross the Simplon, travellers 
are compelled to stop over night atDomo D'Osola, the last village 
before the ascent commences. I will not describe the dirty town 
with its smell of garlic, nor the " red-capped," " mahogany-leg- 
ged," lazy lazzaroni that lounged through the street. Only one 
thing interested me in it. There is a hill near by called Calvary, 
with small white buildings stationed at intervals from the bottom 
to the top. Each of these is occupied with terra-cotta (earthen) 
figures representing our Saviour in the different stages of his suffer- 
ings ; — from the trial before Pilate, to the last agony on the cross. 
Through an iron grating I looked in upon the strange groups, 
amid which, on the earth-floor, were scattered cents and fifths of 
cents ; — thrown there by the faithful. In one, the ceiling of the 
building was concave, and painted blue to represent heaven. On 
this, angels were painted large as life, and represented as hovering 
over the suffering Christ — while they had — babies and all — white 



PASS OF THE SIMPLON, GORGE OF GONDO. 3 

handkerchiefs in their hands, which they held to their eyes quite 
a la mode. It did not strike me at first as so odd that they should 
use handkerchiefs in heaven, as that those beggarly-looking an- 
gels could afford such nice white ones. 

But the Simplon. Nature, that wore the day before, her loveli- 
est, had now put on her angriest aspect. A more glorious to-mor- 
row was never promised to man, than the sun uttered as he went 
down at evening amid the Alps. There was not a cloud to dim 
his brightness, while the transparent atmosphere and the deep blue 
sky seemed dreaming of anything but clouds and mists. But 
who can foretell the whim of an Alpine sky ! As we entered the 
mountains the day grew dark, and from the deep gorge that pierc- 
ed their heart, the mist boiled out like the foam of a waterfall. 
Clouds veiled the giant peaks around, and the rain came down as 
if that were its sole business for the day. The torrent had car- 
ried away the road in some places, and we rolled slowly over the 
bed of the stream. At length we entered the gorge of Gondo, one 
of the most savage and awful in the Alps. This day it was ren- 
dered doubly so by the black Alpine storm that swept through it. 
The road was here squeezed into the narrowest space, while the 
perpendicular rocks rose out of sight into the rain-clouds on either 
side, and the fretting torrent struggled through its torn channel 
far below. The gallery of Gondo, cut 598 feet through the solid 
rock, opens like a cavern over this gulf. Stand here a minute 
and look down the gorge. Those perpendicular walls of nature 
pierce the heavens so high, that but a narrow strip of tossing 
clouds is visible, as the blast puffs away for a moment the mist 
that wrapped them in such close embrace. A waterfall is sound- 
ing in your ears, covering the breast of the hill with foam, and 
filling the cavern with the sullen sound of thunder. Torrents 
leaping from the mountain tops, vanish in spray before they strike 
the bottom. The clouds roll through the gorge, and knock against 
the walls that hem them in ; and then catching the down-sweeping 
gust, spring over their tops, revealing for a moment tHe head of a 
black crag far up where you thought the sky to be, and then dashing 
over its face wrap it again in deeper gloom. All around is hor- 
ribly wild — the howl of the storm — the hissing of the blast around 
the cliffs — the roar of countless cataracts, and the hoarse voice of 



AN AVALANCHE. 



the distracted waters that rush on, and the awful solitude and 
strength that hem you in — make the soul stagger and shrink back 
in unwonted fear and awe. Nature and God seem one — Power 
and Sublimity their only attributes^ and these everlasting peaks 
their only dwelling-place. I would let the carriage, that looked 
like a mere toy among these giant forms of nature, disappear 
among the rolling mist, and then stand on a beetling crag and listen. 
It was the strangest, wildest music my soul ever bowed to, and 
the voices that spoke so loudly around me had such an accent 
and power that my heart stood still in my bosom. I grew ner- 
vous there alone, and felt as if I had not room to breathe. Just 
then, turning my eye up the gorge, the clouds parted over a smooth 
snow-field that lay, white and calm, leagues away against the 
heavens. Oh, it was a relief to know there was one calm thing 
amid that distracted scene — one bosom the tempest could not ruf- 
fle : it told of a Deity ruling serene and tranquil above his works 
and laws. 

As we approached the summit, the snow increased in depth. 
In one place the road passed directly through an old avalanche 
cut out like a tunnel. These avalanches have paths they travel 
regularly as deer. The shape of the mountains decides the di- 
rection they shall take, and hence enables the traveller tp know 
when he is in danger. They also always give premonitions of 
their fall. Before they start there is a low humming sound in 
the air, which the practised ear can detect in a moment. If you 
are in the path of avalanches when this mysterious warning is pass- 
ing through the atmosphere, you cannot make too good use of your 
legs. A few days before we passed, the diligence was broken 
into fragments by one of these descending masses of snow. As 
it was struggling through the deep drifts right in front of one of 
those gorges where avalanches fall, the driver heard this low ring- 
ing sound in the hills above him. Springing from his seat, he 
threw open the door, crying, " Run for your life ! an avalanche ! 
an avalanche !" and drawing his knife he severed the traces of 
the horses, and bringing them a blow with his whip, sprang ahead. 
All this was the work of a single minute; the next minute the 
diligence was in fragments, crushed and buried by the headlong 
mass. 



PASS OF THE SIMPLON, GORGE OF GONDO. 5 

The top of the Simplon is a dreary field' of snow and ice, gird- 
ed round with drearier rocks. The hospice is large and com- 
fortable, and does credit to its founder, Bonaparte ; and the Prior 
is a fat, very handsome, and good-natured man. I had a reg- 
ular romp with one of the San Bernard dogs, who would run and 
leap on me like a tiger, barking furiously as he came, but harm- 
less as a kitten in his frolics. To amuse us, the Prior let out four 
of them from their confinement. No sooner did they find them- 
selves free, than they dashed down the steps of the hospice, and 
bounding into the snow, made the top of the Simplon ring again with 
their furious barkings. After we had wandered over the build- 
ing awhile, and made enquiries respecting lost travellers in win- 
ter, the good Prior set before us some bread and a bottle of wine, 
from which we refreshed ourselves and prepared to depart. We 
had scarcely begun to descend towards the Vallais, when I dis- 
covered, straight down through the gorge, a little village with its 
roofs and church spire, looking like a miniature town there at the 
end and bottom of the abyss. Confident there was no place be- 
tween the top of the Simplon and Brieg, lying nearly twenty 
miles distant at the base, and thinking this could not be that town, 
sunk there apparently within rifle-shot of where I stood, I enquired 
of the vetturino what it was. " Brieg," he replied. " Brieg ?" 
I exclaimed : " why that is six hours' drive from here, and I can 
almost throw a stone in that place." " You will find it far enough 
bofore we get there," he replied, and with that we trotted on. 
Backwards and forwards, now running along the edge of a gulf 
•deep into the mountains and under overhanging glaciers, till it 
grew narrow enough to let a bridge be thrown across; and now 
shooting out on to some projecting point that looked down on shud- 
dering depths, the road wound like a snake in its difficult pas- 
sage among the rocks. Houses of refuge occur at short intervals 
to succour the storm-caught traveller ; and over the road, as it cuts 
the breast of some steep hill that shows an unbroken sheet of 
snow, up — up, till the summit seems lost in the heavens, are 
thrown arches on which the avalanches may slide down into the 
gulf below. Over some of these arches torrents were now roar- 
ing from the melting mass above Calm glaciers on high, and 
angry torrents below ; white snow-fields covering thousands of 



THE VALLAIS. 



acres on distant mountain-tops, and wrecks of avalanches, crush- 
ed at the base of the precipice on which you stand ; fill the 
mind with a succession of feelings that can never be recalled or 
expressed. It seems as if nature tried to overwhelm the awe- 
struck and humbled man in her presence, by crowding scene 
after scene of awful magnificence upon him. 

We stopped at Brieg all night in a most contemptible inn. It was 
some fete day or other of the thousand and one Catholic saints, and 
the streets were strewed with evergreens, while nearly every second 
man had a sprig in his hat. The streets were filled with peasantry 
sauntering lazily about in the evening air, and I leaned from my 
window and watched them as supper was Cooking. There a group 
went loitering about singing some careless song I could not un- 
derstand, while nearer by were two peasants, a young man and 
maiden, with their arms around each other's waists, strolling silent- 
ly along in the increasing twilight. 

At Brieg you enter on the Vallais and follow the Rhone on its 
tranquil course for Lake Leman. Its waters were yet turbid 
from their long struggle in the mountains, and flowed heavily 
through the valley. Along this we trotted all day, and stopped 
at night at. Sion. If Mount Sion in Jerusalem is ' not a better 
place than this, the Arabs are welcome to it. The falls of 
Tourtemagne, which you pass on the road, are very beautiful, 
from the curve and swing of the descending water, caused by the 
peculiar shape of the rocks: and those of Sallenche grand and 
striking.. The long single leap of the torrent is 120 feet, and as 
you stand under it, the descending water has the appearance of 
the falling fragments of a rocket after it has burst. The spray 
that boils from its feet rises like a cloud, and drifting down the 
fields, passes like a fog over the road. 



FORCLAZ AND COL DE BALM. 



II. 

PASSES OF THE FORCLAZ AND COL DE BALM. 



From Martigny, where we arrived at noon from Sion, a mule 
path leads over the Forclaz, from which one can look back on 
the whole valley of the Rhone, one of the most picturesque views 
in Switzerland. After following a while the route of Bonaparte's 
army, on its march from Martigny across the San Bernard, we 
turned off to the right, and began to ascend the Forclaz. Here 
I first tested the world-renowned qualities of the mule, amid the 
Alpine passes ; and I must say I did not find the one I was on 
so very trustworthy. Passing along the brink of a precipice, I 
thought he went unnecessarily near the edge; but concluding he 
knew his own business best, I let him take his own way. Sud- 
denly his hinder foot slipped over — he fell back, struggled a mo- 
ment, while a cry of alarm burst from my companions behind- — 
rallied, and passed on demurely as ever. For a few moments 
it was a question of considerable doubt whether I was to have a 
roll with my mule some hundred feet into the torrent below, with 
the fair prospect of a broken neck and a mangled carcase, or 
cross the Forclaz. I learned one lesson by it, however, never to 
surrender' my own judgment again, not even to a mule. We at 
length debcended into the very small hamlet of Trient, nestled 
down among the pines. After refreshing ourselves after a most 
primitive fashion; with some plain white pine boards, nailed together 
something after the manner of a workman's bench for a table, I told 
our guide I must cross the Col de Balm. He replied it was impos- 
sible. " No one," said he, " has crossed it this year except the 
mountaineer and hunter. The path by which travellers always 
cross it is utterly impassable ; not even a chamois hunter could 



8 A FEARFUL GUIDE. 



follow it ; besides, it rained last night, which has made the snow so 
soft, one would sink in leg-deep at every step, and / cannot at- 
tempt it." This was a damper, for I had thought more of making 
this pass than any other in the Alps. Still, I was fully resolved 
to do it, if it was in the reach of possibility, because from its sum- 
mit was said to be one of the finest views in the world. So walk- 
ing around the hamlet, I accosted a hardy-looking Swiss, and 
asked him if he could guide me over the Col de Balm. He re- 
plied that the ordinary route was impassable, being entirely 
blocked with snow ; but that there was a gorge reaching nearly to 
the top of the pass, now half filled with the wrecks of avalanches, 
which he thought might be travelled. At least, said he, I am 
willing to try, and if we cannot succeed, we can return. I took 
him at his word, and returning, told my friends that I was going 
to cross the Col de Balm, but that I was unwilling to take the re- 
sponsibility of urging them to accompany me, for I was convinced 
the passage Would be one of great fatigue, if not of danger. I 
then called the guide, and bade him meet me with the mules 
about fifteen miles ahead, at Argentiere. He looked at me a 
moment, shook his head, and turned away, saying, " Je vous con- 
seille de ne pas alter." " Je vous conseitte de ne pas alter." I 
hesitated a moment, for my guide book said, " Always obey your 
guide," and farther on stated, that on this very pass a young Ger- 
man lost his life- by refusing to obey his. I did not want to be 
rash, or expose myself unnecessarily to danger, but one of the 
finest views in the world was worth an effort ; so stripping off my 
coat and vest, I bade my fearful guide good-bye, and taking a 
pole in my hand for a cane, started off. My friends concluded to 
follow. Immediately on leaving the valley we entered on the 
debris of avalanches, which fortunately bore us. It was a steady 
pull, hour after hour, mile after mile, up this pathless mass of 
snow, that seemed to go like the roof of a house, at an unbroken 
angle of forty-five degrees, up and up, till the eye wearied with 
the prospect. My friends gave out the first hour, while I, though 
the weakest of the party, seemed to gain strength the higher I 
ascended. The cold rare atmosphere acted like a powerful 
stimulant on my sensitive nervous system, rendering me for the 
time insensible to fatigue. I soon distanced mj friends, while 



COL DE BALM. 9 



my guide kept cautioning me to keep the centre of the gorge, so 
that I could flee either to one side or the other should an avalanche 
see fit to come down just at the time I saw fit to pass. I pressed 
on, and soon lost sight of every living thing. The silent snow, 
fields and lofty peaks were around me, and the deep blue heavens 
bending brightly over all. I thought I was near the top, when 
suddenly there rose right in my very face a cone covered with snow 
of virgin purity. I had ascended beyond the reach of avalanches, 
and stood on snow that lay as it had fallen. I confess I was for 
a moment discouraged and lonely. Near as this smooth, track- 
less height appeared, a broad inclined plain of soft snow was to 
be traversed before I could reach it. I sat down in the yielding 
mass and 'hallooed to the guide. I could hear the faint reply, 
far, far down the breast of the mountain, and at length caught a 
glimpse of his form bent almost double, and toiling like a black 
insect up the white acclivity. I telegraphed to him to know if I 
was to climb that smooth peak. He answered yes, and that I 
must keep to the right. I must confess I could see no particular 
choice in sides, but pressed on. The clean drifts hung along its 
acclivities just as the wintry storm had left them, and every step 
sunk me in mid-leg deep. This was too much : I could not as- 
cend the face of that peak of snow, direct ; it was too steep ; and 
I was compelled to go backwards and forwards in a zigzag di- 
rection to make any progress. At length, exhausted and panting, 
I fell on my face, and pressed my hot cheek to the cold snow. 
I felt as if I never could take another step ; my breath came diffi- 
cult and thick, from the straining efforts I was compelled to put 
forth at every step, while the perspiration streamed in torrents 
from my face and body. But a cold shiver just then passing 
through my frame, admonished me I had already lain too long ; so 
whipping up my flagging spirits, I pushed on. A black spot at 
length appeared in the wide waste of snow. It was the deserted 
house of refuge, and I hailed it with joy, for I knew I was at the 
top. But, oh ! as I approached the thing, dreary enough at best, 
and found it empty, the door broken down by the fierce storm, 
and the deserted room filled with snow-drifts, my heart died with- 
in me, and I gave a double shiver. I crept to the windward side 
of the dismal concern to shield myself from the freezing blast, 



10 VIEW FROM COL DE BALM. 

which swept by without check, and seemed wholly unconscious 
that I had clothing on : and crouched meekly in the sunbeams. 
But as I looked up, about and beneath me, what a wild, ruinous 
world of peaks and crags, and riven mountains, rose on my won- 
dering vision ! 

Farther on, and lo, the sweet vale of Chamouni burst on the 
sight, lying in an irregular waving line along the Arve, that glit- 
tered like a silver chain in the light of the sun. Right out of its 
quiet bosom towered away in awful majesty the form of Mont 
Blanc. Oh, what a chaos of mountain peaks seemed to tear up 
the very sky around him. The lofty " needles,", inaccessible to 
any thing but the wing of the eagle, shot up their piercing tops 
over glaciers that, rolled into confusion, went streaming, an ice- 
flood, into the plains below. How can I describe this scene. It 
seemed as if the Deity had once taken the chain from his wildest 
laws, to see what awful strength they could put forth, and what a 
chaos of mountains they could tumble together. High over all, 
with its smooth round top, stood Mont Blanc, like a monarch with 
his mountain guard around him. Yet. how silent and motionless 
were they all, as if in their holy Sabbath rest. ' No wonder Cole- 
ridge lifted his hymn in the Vale of Chamouni. Yet he should 
have looked on it from this spot. From no. other point do you 
get the relative height of Mont Blanc. From the valley you look 
up, and all the peaks seem nearly of a height : but here you look 
across and see how he stands like Saul among the Israelites- 
head and shoulders above all his brethren. The great difficulty 
in standing here is, the soul cannot expand to the magnitude of 
the scene. It is crushed and overwhelmed, and almost stu- 
pined. 

I plucked some flowers that lifted their modest heads from the 
margin of the snow, and began to descend towards Chamouni 
But as I went leaping down the white slope with a shout, I sud- 
denly found myself hanging by the arms, while the dull sound of 
a torrent that swept my feet made any but pleasant music in my 
ear. I had broken through the snow crust, and catching by my 
arms, was left dangling over a stream, the depth and breadth of 
which I had no desire to measure. The sudden change from my 
headlong speed and boisterous shouts, to the meek, demure look 



SUNSET ON MONT BLANC. 11 

and manner with which I insinuated myself away from that un- 
pleasant neighbourhood, set my companions into convulsions of 
laughter. 

A cloud that came drifting along the sky caught on Mont 
Blanc, and wrapped it from my sight. Ah, thought I, good night 
to Mont Blanc! But the sweet valley was left basking in the 
light of the setting sun. 

Hark ! a low rumbling sound rises on the air, swelling to the 
full-voiced thunder. I turned, and lo ! a precipice of ice had 
loosened itself from the mountain, and falling over, plunged, with 
a crash that shook the hills, into the plain below. I stood awe- 
struck and silent. It was the first avalanche I had heard, and its 
deep voice echoing amid those mountain solitudes awoke strange 
feelings within me. The mass from which it had split was of a 
pale blue, contrasting beautifully with the dull white of the sur- 
rounding glacier. 

At Argentiere I found the guide and mules. Mounting, I rode 
slowly on, thinking of that Being who planned the globe, and 
heaved on high all its strong mountains, when a sudden cry from 
the guide attracted my attention. He stood pointing to Mont Blanc. 
I looked up, and to my surprise, the cloud had rained itself away, 
and the top of the mountain was drawn with its bold outline 
against the clear heavens. The sun had set to me, but Mont 
Blanc was still looking down on his retiring light. And now over 
all its white form spread a pale rose colour, deepening gradually 
into a pink — the peaks around taking the same ruddy glow, while 
the giant shadows stretched their misshapen, black proportions 
over the vast snow-fields between. There they stood, a mass of 
rose-coloured snow mountains, towering away in the heavens : 
they had suddenly lost their massive strength and weight, and 
light as frost work, and apparently transparent as a rose-tinted 
shell, they seemed the fit home of spiritual beings. And then 
what serenity and silence over them all. There was none of the 
life and motion of flashing sunbeams ; none of the glitter of light 
itself on mountain summits, but a deep quiet that seemed almost 
holy, resting there, as if that rose-tinted top was bathed in the 
mellow radiance that one might dream of as belonging to a sun- 
set in heaven. My eye wandered down the now ethereal form 



12 MONT BLANC AT NIGHT. 

of Mont Blanc till it rested on a wreath of fir-trees, whose deep 
green contrasted strangely with that pure rose-colour. I stood be- 
wildered — it seemed a magic land. But the glorious vision, like 
all beauty, was as transient as the hour that gave it birth. 
Fainter and fainter again grew the tints till all passed away, and 
Mont Blanc stood white and cold and ghost-like against the even- 
ing sky. This was more than I expected to see, and what few 
travellers do see. Mont Blanc is chary of such exhibitions of 
himself. 

I lay down at night with my fancy too full of wild images to 
let me sleep soundly. Feverish and restless ; at" midnight I arose 
and pushed open my window. All was silent as the great shad- 
ows around, save the sound of the torrent that rolled its turbid 
stream through the valley. The moon was hanging her crescent 
over the top of Mont Blanc, that stood like a model in the clear 
heavens, a fit throne for the stars that seemed flashing from its 
top. 



MONTANVERTE VALE OF CHAMOUNI. 13 



m. 



ASCENT OP THE MONTANVERTE, VALE OF 

GHAMOUNI. 



The day after I made the pass of the Col de Balme I ascended 
the Montanverte to the Mer de Glace. I will not weary you 
with a description of this frequently described yet ever strangely 
wild scene. I mention it only to show the simple process by 
which an Alpine guide sometimes descends a mountain. In climb- 
ing up our zigzag path in our previous ascent, I noticed an in- 
clined plane of snow going straight up the mountain — the relics 
of the track of avalanches which had fallen during the winter 
and spring. In returning, the path came close to the top of this 
inclined plane, which went in a direct line to the path far below. 
A slide down this I saw would save nearly half a mile, so I 
sprang on to it, expecting a long, rapid, though perfectly safe de- 
scent down the mountain. But the surface was harder than 1 
supposed, and I no sooner struck it than I shot away, like an ar- 
row from a bow. I kept my feet for some time as I tacked and 
steered, or rather " was tacked and steered," straining every mus- 
cle to keep my balance, and striking my Alpine stock now on the 
right hand and now on the left ; till exhausted, I fell headlong 
down the declivity, and went rolling, over and over, till I finally 
landed, with dizzy head and bruised limbs, amid broken rocks 
at the bottom. When I had gathered up my senses, I looked 
round for my companions, and lo, there was my friend, an English 
gentleman who had started at the same time; about midway of 
the slope. As he found himself shooting off so rapidly, he 
wheeled his back down the hill and fell on his hands. This was 

13 



14 BLISTERED FEET. 



not sufficient, however, to arrest his progress, and he came on 
bear fashion, though at a slower rate. Despite my bruises, I lay 
amid the rocks and laughed: Our guide stood at the top, con- 
vulsed with laughter, till he saw us all safely landed, and then 
leaped on the inclined plane himself. Throwing one end of his 
Alpine stock behind him, he leaned almost his entire weight on 
it. The iron spike sinking in the ice and snow, checked the ra- 
pidity of his descent, and steered him at the same time, and he 
came to the bottom in a slow and gentle slide. So it is in this 
world : there is no man who cannot find those who will teach him 
on some points. 

When I reached the English hotel again I found I had over- 
tasked myself: I began to suspect as much before I had half 
reached the top of Montanverte. After my exhausting tramp in 
the soft snow over the Col de Balme I should have lain by a day, 
but, my toilsome day's work and wet feet both, had not left me 
any worse, but on the contrary better — so I concluded to take it 
on foot up the Montanverte. I believe I should have refused to 
ride, well or sick, when I came to know how matters stood about 
a guide and mules. We had hired a guide and mules at Martigny 
by the day ; supposing, of course, we could use them at Cbamouni. 
Acting on this belief, my companions, who had resolved to ride, 
ordered out their mules; when, to their astonishment, they were 
told that neither our guide nor our mules could be permitted to 
ascend the mountain. A Chamouni man and Chamouni mules 
must go up the Montanverte or none. This is one of the many 
niggardly, petty contrivances one meets at every turn in Switzer- 
land to wring money from the pockets of travellers. 

I should have done better to have rode even on those conditions, 
for I was completely fagged out at night, and with more bones 
aching than I before supposed I carried in me. But after tossing 
awhile on my feverish couch, I at length fell asleep. How long 
I was in the land of oblivion I know not, but I awoke to recollec- 
tion with the most vivid consciousness of possessing ten toes. 
Such exquisite pain I never before experienced. I turned and 
twisted on my couch — gathered up my legs like a patriarch to 
die — held them in my hands — but all in vain : I could think of 
nothing but torture by slow fire. Every toe I possessed seemed 



A LUNATIC. 15 



to have been converted into a taper, which had been lighted, and 
was slowly burning away. At length I could endure the agony 
no longer, and rung the bell till I waked up one of the head ser- 
vants of the house. As he knocked at the door I bade him come 
in with an emphasis that only made his entrance more studied and 
careful. " What is the matter, sir VI he enquired in the most 
provokingly quiet tone. " Matter !" I exclaimed, as I thrust both 
feet out of the bed, " I want you to tell me what is the matter. 
You know all the strange diseases of this infamous country, and I 
want you to see what has got into my feet." He looked at 
my swollen, angry toes a moment, and replied with a most bland 
smile, "Oh, you have blistered your feet — they are snow blister- 
ed." Saying this he left the room, and in a few moments return- 
ed with some brandy in a saucer, into which he dropped several 
drops of tallow from his candle, and then rubbed my feet with the 
mixture. In a few minutes I was relieved, and soon after fell 
into a quiet slumber; from which I awoke to a half-dreamy state, 
with a dim consciousness there was music around me. At length, 
clear, mellow notes of a horn came swelling on my ear. I start- 
ed up, and looking from my window, saw a shepherd driving his 
goats to their mountain pasturage. It was early dawn, and as 
the Alpine strain he blew echoed up the vale of Chamouni, I 
turned to my pillow again, while my early dreams of the land of 
the Swiss, with all the distinctness and freshness of their spring- 
time, came back on my memoiy. 

1 have given the above particular account of my blistered feet, 
-and their cure, for the sake of those who may make pedestrian 
excursions in the Alps. With the first symptoms of sore feet, the 
application of brandy with tallow dropped in should be made, and 
much suffering will be escaped. 

Taking one evening a stroll down the vale of Chamouni, just as 
the sun was tinging the Alpine summits with his farewell glories, 
I came upon one of those unfortunate beings from whom the light 
of reason has fled. Her hat was loaded down with wild flowers, 
and grass, and sprigs of every description, while she was toying 
with a bunch of flowers she held in her hand. As I stood leaning 
against a wall, she came up and offered me some, talking at the 
same time in a patois made up apparently of a half dozen Ian- 



16 ASCENT 01 MONT BLANC. 

guages, scarcely a word of which I could understand. I declined 
her flowers at first, but she pressed them on me till I took one, and 
placing it among my collection, preserved it as a memento of Cha- 
mouni. 

The register of the English Hotel is loaded down with names 
interspersed with every variety of remark, in poetry and prose : 
some grave, some gay, some sentimental, and some comical. The 
following description of the ascent of Mont Blanc pleased me so 
much I copied it. 

They talk of Helvellyn, Ben Lomond : all stuff! 
Mont Blanc is the daisy for me sure enough, 
For next to the Peek, in the county Mayo, 
It bates all the mountains or hills that I know. 
Who'd see Mont Blanc fairly must make the ascent, 

Although owld to look up was content : 

I can tell owld T that as I mounted higher. 

For one aigle he saw, I found three Lammergeyer. 

I was up on the top, where, (I tell you no lie) 

I could count every rafter that hoivlds up the .sky. 

I wish to tell truth, and no more, tho' no less, 

And its tirrible height to corrictly express: 

I should say if I had but a common balloon, 

I could get in one hour with all aise to the moon. 

If ever you wish on that trip to set out, 

You should start from the top of Mont Blanc without doubt : 

You'd find the way sure, and the chapest to boot, 

Since you'd make such a dale of the journey on foot ; 

Yet with one good, or two middling spy-glasses, 

You could see from Mont Blanc every action that passes. 

I persaved the last quarter quite plain through a fog, 

Growing out of the first like a great moving bog. 

In a country so subject to change, I'll be bail, 

Some hints could be got of a fair sliding scale ; 

That Peel should there go to enquire, I advise, 

For I heartily wish him a flight to the skies. 

But again to my subject : I say and repate it, 

Mont Blanc bates all things that were ever created. 



THE LAKERS 17 



As I was determined new wonders to seek, 

I went by a route that was somewhat unique : 

By the great sea of ice, where I saw the big hole 

Where Captain Ross wintered not far from the pole : 

The Tropic of Cancer first lay on one side 

Like a terrible crevice some forty feet wide : 

Farther on I saw Greenland, as green as owld Dan, 

But " Jardin," the guides called it, all to a man. 

I didn't dispute, so we kept under weigh, 

Till we come to the ind of the great icy say, 

We saw the great mules " that congealed in a pop," 

When Saussure and Belmet would ride to the top ; 

Now nothing remains but the petrified bones, 

Which mostly resembles a pair of big stones. 

I brought my barometer, made by one Kayting, 

For fear the weather would want rigulating ; 

But the weight of the air at the top so incrased, 

That the mercury sunk fourteen inches at laste. 

Thin the cowld was so hot — tho' we didn't perspire — 

That we made water boil without any fire. 

We fired off a gun, but the sound was so small, 

That we doubted if truly it sounded at all ; 

Which smallness was caused (I towld my friend Harrison) 

Alone by the size of Mont Blanc in comparison. 

But to describe all the sights would require 

Not powers like mine, but genius far higher: 

Not Byron in verse, nor Scott in his prose, 

Could give the laste notion of Blanc and his snows. 

Indeed none should try it but one of the " Lakers," 

Who, if not great wits, are yet great undertakers : 

And then, of all these, none could do it so well 

As the wonderful author of great Peter Bell ; 

For he to the summit could easily float 

Without walking a step — " in his good little boat." 

Next to him the great Southey, whose magical power 

Paints the fight of the cat in the awful mice tower ; 

Whose description in words of sublimity set, 

Says " the summer and autumn had been so wet." 



38 LAST NIGHT IN CHAMOUNI. 

'Tis spirits like these who are fit to attempt 
The labour from which such as I are exempt. 

Pat'k McSweeny. 

But the last night in Chamouni came ; and as I stood and leaned 
out of my window in the moonlight, listening to the turbid Arveron 
rolling its swollen current through the vale, suddenly a dull, heavy 
sound, like the booming of distant cannon, rose on the night air. 
An avalanche had fallen far up amid the Alpine solitudes. Noth- 
ing can fill the soul with such strange, mysterious feelings as the 
sound of avalanches falling at midnight, and alone, amid the Alps. 



VIEW FROM TETE NOIRE. 19 



IV. 

PASS OF THE TETE NOIRE. 



It may be from early association, or it may be that every one 
has made a hero of Mont Blanc, but there is something about 
that majestic form and those splintered pinnacles, standing like so 
many helmeted sentinels around him ; and all that prodigality of 
snow-fields and glaciers, that has left its impress on my memory 
and heart for ever. And then that strangely silent, white, myste- 
rious summit, bending its beautiful outline so far in the heavens, 
seems to be above the turmoil at its base, and apparently 
wrapped in its own majestic musings. I would have given any 
thing to have placed my feet upon it and looked down on the 
world below, but it was too early in the season to think of doing 
it — indeed, it could not be done even by the chamois hunter, for 
fresh snow had fallen every few days throughout the season. A 
French lady, delicate and pale, wept in grief that she could not 
make the ascent. 

The afternoon we mounted our mules for the Tete Noire was 
dark and overcast, and there was every appearance of an Alpine 
storm. We had scarcely left the narrow valley and entered the 
mule path among the mountains, before the blast began to sweep 
by in gusts, till the fir trees rocked and roared over our heads. 
Having ascended at length above the region of trees, I turned to 
catch a last view of Mont Blanc and his glorious mountain guard 
before I entered the gloomy pass. There he stood with his snowy 
helmet on, looking down on the vast glaciers that went streaming 
into the valley below, and on the silent snow. fields stretching 
away in every direction, and around on the wild chaos of moun- 
tains that nature seemed to have piled there in some awful hurry 
of passion. The scene was indescribable, for the feelings it 



20 ALPINE STORM. 



awakened had no fixed character. An object of beauty would 
stand beside an object of terror. A calm and soft snow-field that 
looked in the distance as if it might be a slumbering place for 
spirits, went creeping up to as savage a cliff as ever frowned over 
an abyss; while the gentle mist, " like children gone to their even- 
ing repose," slept here and there in chasms that seemed fit onlj 
as a place of rendezvous for the storm. Strangely wild and majes- 
tic towered away those peaks on the vision. I gazed and gazed, 
reluctant to say farewell to the wondrous scene. 

Just then, a body of mist riding the mountain blast, swept over 
us, veiling every thing in impenetrable gloom, while the rain be- 
gan to descend in torrents. Sheltering ourselves under the pro- 
jecting roof of a Swiss hut that stood a little removed from the 
path, we waited awhile for the shower to pass over, but it was 
like waiting for a river to run by — the clouds condensed faster 
and faster, and the day grew darker and darker, till sudden night 
seemed about to involve every thing. A feeling of dread crept over 
me as we wheeled out again into the rain, and turned the drooping 
and dripping heads of our mules towards the pass. I felt as if 
we were on the threshold of some gloomy fate, and I defy any 
one to keep up his spirits when hanging along the cliffs of an Al- 
pine pass in the midst of a pelting Alpine storm. We spurred 
on, however; now crawling over barren and desolate rocks, now 
shooting out on to some projecting point that balanced over a deep 
abyss filled with boiling mist, through which the torrent struggled 
up with a muffled sound, — and now sinking into a black defile 
through which the baffled storm went howling like a madman in 
his cell. As I stood on a ledge, and listened to the war of the 
elements around, suddenly through a defile that bent around a 
distant mountain, came a cloud as black as nisfht. Its forehead 
was torn and rent by its fierce encounter with the cliffs, and it 
came sweeping down as if inherent with life and a will. It burst 
over us, drenching us with rain, while the redoubled thunder 
rolled and cracked among the cliffs like a thousand cannon-shot. 
Every thing but my mule and the few feet of rock I occupied 
would be hidden from my sight, and then would come a flash of 
lightning, rending the robe of mist, as it shot athwart the gloom, 
revealing a moment 'some black and heaven-high rock ; and then 



A CRUSHED HAMLET. 21 

leaving all again as dark and impenetrable as ever. The path often 
led along the face of the precipice, just wide enough for my mule ; 
while the mist that was tossing in the abyss below, by concealing 
its depth; added inconceivably to its mystery and terror. Thus, 
hour after hour, we toiled on, with every thing but the few feet 
of rock we occupied shrouded in vapour, except when it now and 
then rent over some cliff or chasm. I was getting altogether too 
much of sublimity, and would have gladly exchanged my certainly 
wild enough path for three or four miles of fair trotting ground. 
But in spite of my drenched state, I could not but laugh now and 
then as I saw my three companions and guide straggling along in 
Indian file, and taking with such a meek, resigned air, the rain , 
on their bowed shoulders. 

As we advanced towards the latter end of the pass, I was 
startled as though I had seen an apparition. The mist, which for 
a long time had enshrouded every thing, suddenly parted over a 
distant mountain slope high up on the farther side of the gulf, and 
a small Swiss hamlet, smiling amid the green pasturages, burst 
on the vision. I had hardly time to utter an exclamation of sur- 
prise before it closed again as before, blotting out every thing 
from view. I could hardly believe my own senses, so suddenly 
had the vision come and departed, and stood a long time wait- 
ing its re-appearance. But it came no more — the stubborn mist 
locked it in like the hand of fate. That little eagle-nested ham- 
let, with its sweet pasturages, came and went like a flash of light- 
ning, yet so distinct was the impression it made, that I could now 
almost paint it from memory. 

Reaching the lower slope of the mountain, we passed a little 
village utterly prostrate by an avalanche. The descending mass 
of snow swept clean over it, carrying away church and all. It 
looked as if some mighty hand had been spread out over the dwell- 
ings, and crushed them with a single effort to the earth. It was 
one scene of ruin and devastation; yet strange to say,, though the 
avalanche fell in the night, only two or three persons were killed. 
In riding along it was fearful to see where an avalanche had 
swept, bending down strong trees, as though they were reeds, in 
its passage. 

Soaked through, worn out and depressed, I was glad when the 



22 TETE NOIRE. 



gloomy path around the Tete Noire (black head) opened into day- 
light ; and the blazing pine fire that was soon kindled up in a dry 
room, was as welcome as the face of a friend. The only relic I 
brought away from this pass was an Alpine rose, which my guide 
plucked from among the rocks, where it lay like a ruby amid sur- 
rounding rubbish. 

In looking over this description, I see I have utterly faikd in 
giving any adequate conception of the scenery. One would get 
the impression that there was a single defile, dark and narrow, 
and nothing more. But when it is remembered that we started 
at nine, and emerged from the dark forest of Tete Noire at three ; 
one can imagine the variety of scenery that opened like con- 
stant surprises upon us. Now we would be climbing a steep 
mountain — now plunging into a dark gorge filled with boiling 
mist — now hanging along a cliff, that in its turn hung over an al- 
most bottomless chasm — now stretching across some sweet pastu- 
rage — now following a torrent in its desperate plunge through the 
rocks, and now picking our careful way through as gloomy a 
forest as ever enclosed a robber's den. I do not know how it 
may appear in pleasant weather, but the pass of the Tete Noire 
in the midst of an Alpine storm is not a pleasure jaunt. 



BATHS OF LEUK. 23 



V. 

BATHS OF LEUK 



In coming from the Simplon up the Vallais to Geneva, one passes 
the baths of Leuk, a little removed from the Rhone. This ham- 
let, elevated 4500 feet above the level of the sea, is shut in by a 
circular precipice that surrounds it like a mighty wall, up which 
you are compelled to climb in steps cut in the face of the solid 
rock. Its hot springs are visited during the summer months by 
the French and Swiss for their healing effects. It is something 
of a task, as one can well imagine, to get an invalid up to these 
baths. The transportation is entirely by hand, and the terms are 
regulated by the director of the baths. These regulations are 
printed in French, and one relating to corpulent persons struck 
me so comically that I give a translation of it. 

" For a person over ten years of age four porters are necessary ; if he is 
above the ordinary weight, six porters ; but if he is of an extraordinary weight, 
and the commissary judges proper, two others may be added, but never more." 

There are some dozen springs in all, the principal one of which, 
the St. Lawrence, has a temperature of 124 deg. Fahrenheit. 
The mode of bathing is entirely unique, and makes an American 
open his eyes, at first, in unfeigned astonishment. The patient 
begins by remaining in the bath the short space of one hour, and 
goes on increasing the time till he xeaches eight hours ; four before 
breakfast and four after dinner. After each bath of four hours' 
duration, the doctor requires one hour to be passed in bed. This 
makes in all ten hours per day to the poor patient, leaving him 
little time for any thing else. To obviate the tediousness of soak- 
ing alone four hours in a private bath, the patients all bathe 



24 MANNER OF BATHING. 



together. A large shed divided into four compartments, each 
capable of holding about eighteen persons, constitutes the princi- 
pal bath house. A slight gallery is built along the partitions 
dividing the several baths, for visitors to occupy who wish to enjoy 
the company of their friends, without the inconvenience of lying 
in the water. This is absolutely necessary, for if eight hours 
are to be passed in the bath and two in bed, and the person 
enduring all this is to be left alone in the mean time, the life of 
an anchorite would be far preferable to it. It is solitary confine- 
ment in the penitentiary, with the exception that the cell is a 
watery one. All the bathers, of both sexes and all ages and con- 
ditions, are clothed in long woollen mantles with a tippet around 
their shoulders,»and sit on benches ranged round the bath, under 
water up to their necks. Stroll into this large bathing room 
awhile after dinner, the first thing, that meets your eye is some 
dozen or fifteen heads bobbing up and down, like buoys, on the 
surface of the steaming water. There, wagging backwards and 
forwards, is the shaven crown of a fat old friar. Close beside, 
the glossy ringlets of a fair maiden, while between, perhaps, is 
the moustached face of an invalid officer. In another direction, 
gray hairs are " floating on the tide," and the withered faces of 
old dames peer " over the flood." But to sit and soak a whole 
day, even in company, is no slight penalty, and so to while away 
the lazy hours, one is engaged in reading a newspaper which he 
holds over his head, another in discussing a bit of toast on a float- 
ing table ; a third, in keeping a withered nosegay, like a water- 
lily, just above the surface, while it is hard to tell which looks 
most dolorous, the withered flowers or her face. In one corner 
two persons are engaged rn playing chess ; and in another, three 
or four more, with their chins just out of water, are enjoying a 
pleasant " tete-a-tete" about the delegability of being under 
water, seething away at a temperature of nearly 120 deg., eight 
hours per day. Persons making their daily calls on their friends 
are entering and leaving the gallery, or leaning over engaged in 
earnest conversation with those below them. Not much etiquette 
is observed in leave-taking, for if the patient should attempt a 
bow he would duck his head under water. Laughable as this 
may seem, it is nevertheless a grave matter, and no one would 



A CURIOUS VILLAGE. 25 

submit to it except for health, that boon for which the circle of 
the world is made, the tortures of amputation endured, and the 
wealth of the millionaire squandered. The strictest decorum is 
preserved, and every breach of propriety punished by the worthy 
burgomaster with a fine of two francs or thirty-seven and a half 
cents. A set of regulations is hung -against the walls specifying 
the manner with which every patient is to conduct himself or 
herself. — As specimens, I give articles 7 and 9, which will also 
be found in Mr. Murray's guide book. 

" Art. 7. Personne ne peut entrer dans les bains sans etre revetue d'une 
chemise longue, et ample, d'une etoffe grossiere, sous peine de 2 fr. d'amende." 

" Art. 9. La meme peine sera encouir par ceux qui n'en entreraient pas, 
ou n'en sortiraient pas d'une maniere decente." 

Translation. Art. 7. No one is permitted to enter these baths without be- 
ing clothed in a long, ample, and thick " chemise," under the penally of a fine 
of 2 francs. 

Art. 9. The same penalty will be incurred by those who do not enter or de- 
part in a becoming manner. 

Great care is taken that every thing should be done " decently 
and in order," and there is nothing to prevent people from beha- 
ving themselves while sitting on benches under water as well as 
above water. 

About a mile and a half from these baths is the little village of 
Albinen, perched on the top of the precipice that hems in the 
valley of Leuk on every side like a huge wall. The only direct 
mode of communication between the inhabitants of Leuk and this 
village is by a series of nearly a dozen ladders going up the face 
of the precipice. They are of the rudest kind, and fastened to 
the rock with hooked sticks. Yet the peasants ascend and descend 
them all times of the day and night and at all seasons of the year. 
The females have added to their usual dress the pantaloons of the 
men. This has become so universal, that in climb ng the moun- 
tains around, they tuck up their dresses, and appear at a little 
distance like boys. Thus do these rude peasantry, following the 
instincts of nature and modesty, combine convenience and pro- 
priety, and retain their fashions from one generation to another. 
It is said that pantalets had their origin here. 



26 CASTLE OF CHILLON. 



VI. 



THE CASTLE OF CHILLON. GENEVA. JUNC- 
TION OF THE RHONE AND ARVE. 



The night after we left Martigny, we slept on the shores of 
Lake Geneva, in close view of Chillon. This Castle has become 
immortal by accident. In passing round Lake Geneva, in 1816, 
Byron got caught in a rain-storm, and remained two days in the 
little village of Ochy, in a mere hut of an inn. Having nothing 
else to do, he wrote in the mean time, " The Prisoner of Chillon," 
the characters of which poem lived only in his own imagination. 
At that time he was even unacquainted with the story of Bonni- 
vard, which might have been made the basis of a very beautiful 
poem. When he afterwards heard of it, he wrote a sonnet on the 
noble prior of Victor, in which he says : 

" Chillon ! thy prison is a holy place, 

And thy sad floor an altar ; for 'twas trod 

Until its very steps have left a trace 
Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod, 
By Bonnivard ! May none those marks efface ! 
For they appeal from tyranny to God." 

I regard the "Prisoner of Chillon" one of the most beautiful 
pieces Byron ever wrote. It has all his passion and fancy, with- 
out any of his wickedness. It is tender, touching and beautiful, 
and ought to make any place immortal. Yet I confess that the 
old castle standing on a rock in the lake did not owe its chief 
charm to me from this poem. I thought of the patriot Bonni- 
vard, who suffered here for endeavouring to make Geneva free. 
A freeman, and loving freedom more than life, he withstood, 
though only Prior of St. Victor, the tyrannical Duke of Savoy and 



"BONNIVARD." 27 



his own heartless Bishop. Driven from Geneva, he was betray- 
ed into the hands of the Duke, and cast into a dungeon of this 
castle, below the surface of the lake. Chained to a column of 
stone, the bold-hearted Prior passed six long years in solitary con- 
finement. The ring still remains in the pillar to which his chain 
was attached, and the solid pavement is worn in, by the constant 
tread of his feet as he paced to and fro in his dungeon. The 
only music that greeted his ear, year after year, was the low dash- 
ing of the waters against his prison walls, or the shock of the 
waves as the tempest hurled them on the steadfast castle. Year 
after year he trod the self-same spot, while the iron rusted on his 
stiffening limbs, and hope grew fainter and fainter round his 
heart. He struggled to free others, and got a chain upon his own 
limbs. But he had one consolation, that which cheers the mar- 
tyr in every age and in every noble cause : that was — 

" Truth crushed to earth will rise again, 
The eternal years of God are hers." 

At length, one day, as he was slowly pacing to and fro in his si- 
lent dungeon, he heard a murmur without, like the coming of a 
storm. The castle quivered on its strong foundations, but it could 
not be from the waves against its sides. He listened again ; 
there were human voices in the air, and the shout of a multitude 
shook the very rock on which he stood. A deeper paleness spread 
over Bonnivard's cheek, and then a sudden flush shot to his tem- 
ples as hope kindled in his heart. Blows are mingled with the 
shouts — the crash of falling timbers is heard — the outer gate is 
forced, and like the blast of a trumpet rings over the storm the 
name of " Bonnivard ! Bonnivard !" Nothing can withstand 
the excited throng. Bolts and bars rend before them — the gates 
shake, totter and fall. At length they reach Bonnivard's dun- 
geon, against which blows are rained like hail stones. The mas- 
sive gate quivers and yields and falls, and a thousand voices rend 
the very walls with the shout—" Bonnivard, you are free V 
What said the patriot then? Forgetful of himself — of his own 
freedom — thinking only of his country, he cried out — 

"And Geneva?" 

" Is Free too !" came back like the roar of the sea. The 



28 ROUSSEAU. 



Swiss had wrested from the hands of Charles V. of Savoy the whole 
Pays du Vaud. Chillon held out to the last ; but besieged by 7,000 
Swiss by land, and the Genevese gallies by sea, it was at length 
taken. It was like waking up from a dream to Bonnivard. 
When he descended into his dungeon, Geneva was subject to the 
Duke of Savoy, and was a Catholic State. When he came forth, 
Geneva was free, a republic, and professing the reformed faith. 

Byron has made free use of the poet's privilege to exaggerate, 
in speaking of the depth of the lake. He says : — 

" Lake Leman lies by Chillon's walls — 
A thousand feet in depth below 
Its massy waters meet and flow : 
Thus much the fathom line was sent, 
From Chillon's snow-white battlement." 

A poet should never go into statistics of this sort, for other folks 
can measure as well as he, though they may not write poetry. 
There is no place in the region of the castle more than 280 
feet deep. 

I will not weary one with the mere names of the beautiful 
places and views around this sweet lake. The sentimentalist 
would talk of Clarens and Rousseau and his Julie ; the sceptic, 
of Voltaire and Ferney : but I visited neither place, having no 
sympathy with the morbid, sickly, and effeminate sentimentality 
of the one, or with the heartless scoffing wit of the other. The 
garden in which Gibbon finished his history of Rome is shown at 
Lausanne. He first conceived the idea of his history while sit- 
ting on a broken column in the Coliseum, and ended it on the 
banks of Lake Geneva. He says : " It was on the day or rather 
the night of June, 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, 
that I wrote the last line of the last page, in a summer-house in 
my garden. After laying down my pen, I took several turns in 
a berceau or covered walk of acacias, which commands a pros- 
pect of the country, the lake, and the mountains. The air was 
temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was re- 
flected from the waves, and all nature was silent." This re- 
markable passage throws open the feelings of the inner man at 
the close of his arduous work. Is it not strange that a man of 



GIBBON. 29 

such intellect and sentiment should see no God in history or na- 
ture 1 In the ruins of Rome at his feet, surmounted every where 
by the cross, he could see nothing but the work of human pas- 
sions and human cunning. So in the placid lake, smiling in the 
moonlight ; and in the towering Alps folding their mighty summits 
away on the nightly heavens, he could behold nothing but the as- 
pect of nature. To him the world had no plan or purpose, and 
the busy centuries no mission or meaning. The heavens and the 
earth were a mere poem — the history of man a short episode — 
and both an accident. How a man with such views could give 
himself up to the contemplations Gibbon did, and escape suicide, 
is a mystery to me. I could not live in such a planless, aimless 
creation. ' Give me no steady centre to these mighty mutations — 
no stable throne amid these rocking kingdoms and shaking orbs — 
no clear and controlling mind to this wild chaos of ideas and pas- 
sions — no great and glorious result to all this mysterious and aw- 
ful preparation, — and Reason herself would become as wild and 
confused and aimless as they. A great mind, without a God, is 
to me the most melancholy thing in the universe. 

Lake Geneva lies in the shape of a half-moon with the horns 
curved towards the South, and is the largest lake in Switzer- 
land, being 55 miles long. It has one strange phenomenon. In 
different parts of it, but more frequently near Geneva, the water 
suddenly rises, at times, from two to five feet. It never remains 
in this position more than 25 minutes, when it again falls back to 
its original level. These are called seiches, and the only expla- 
nation given of them is the unequal pressure of the atmosphere 
on the surface at different times. This, however, is mere con- 
jecture. 

But the shores constitute the beauty of Lake Geneva. Sloping 
down to the water's edge, covered with villas, villages, and culti- 
vated fields, and hallowed by such sweet as. well as stirring asso- 
ciations, it seems more like a dream-land than a portion of our 
rough earth. There is an atmosphere, an influence, a something 
around it that takes the heart captive at once, and the lips will 
murmur 

"Clear, placid Leman ! thy contrasted lake 
With the wild world I dwell in, is a thing 



30 CALVIN. 

Which warns me, with its stillness, to forsake 
Earth's troubled waters for a purer spring: 
This quiet sail is as a noiseless wing 
To waft me from destruction ; once I loved 
Torn ocean's roar, but thy soft murmuring 
Sounds sweet as if a sister's voice reproved 
That I with stern delights should e'er have been thus moved. 

It is the hush of night, and all between 
Thy margin and the mountains, dusk yet clear, 
Mellowed and mingled, yet distinctly seen, 
Save darkened Jura, whose capt heights appear 
Precipitously steep ; and drawing near 
There breathes a living fragrance from the shore 
Of flowers yet fresh with childhood ; on the ear 
Drops the light drip of the suspended oar, 
Or chirps the grasshopper one good night carol more. 

At intervals some bird from out the brakes 
Star's into life a moment, then is still ; 
There seems a floating whisper on the hill, 
But that is fancy, — for the starlight dews 
All silently their tears of love instil, 
Weeping themselves away." 

Yet quiet and dreamy as these shores appear, stern practical 
men have lived upon them, and the name of Calvin goes down 
. with that of Geneva and Switzerland in the history of the world. 
Calvin and Rousseau ! what, a strange connection ; yet they are 
linked together in the history of Geneva. The church still stands 
where the itinerant preacher and foreigner first thundered forth 
his denunciations against the dissolute town. Elevated to the 
. control of the republic, he was just the man to sway its turbulent 
democracy. Stern, fearless, and decided, he marked out his 
course of policy, and made every thing bend to it. Take even 
some of the most arbitrary of his enactments, and they show the 
clear-sightedness of the man. Among them we find that only 
five dishes were allowed for a dinner to ten persons. Plush 
breeches were forbidden to be worn ; violation of the Sabbath 
was punished by a public admonition from the pulpit, and adul- 
tery with death ; while the gamester was exposed in the pillory, 
with a pack of cards suspended round his neck. These things 



JUNCTION OF THE RHINE AND ARVE. 31 

awaken a smile or sneer in these more liberal days, but whoever 
shall write the last history of republics will prove that such ap- 
parently bigoted enactment-, sprung out of the clearest practical 
wisdom. A republic without the severity of Puri an manner, I 
believe impossible for any length of time ; that is while men are 
so depraved they will use their liberty for the gratification of their 
passions. The (so called) "straight-laced Puritan" is, after all, 
the only man who knows any thing of the true genius of a repub- 
lic among men such as we find them. Calvin and Rousseau ! 
which, after all, was the true republican ? the sentimental dream- 
er or the stern Presbyterian ? These two names stand in Geneva 
like great indexes, pointing out the characters of the 30,000 per- 
sons who annually pass through it, by showing which way their 
sympathies flow. One portion looks on Calvin to sneer, the other 
on Rousseau to sigh. 

The deep blue tint of the waters of the Rhone as it leaves the 
lake has often been commented upon. As it rushes under the 
bridges of the town, it looks as if a vast quantity of indigo had 
been emptied into it, tinging it as I have seen water in no other 
part of the world. About a mile and a half from town, this stream 
of " heavenly dye" receives the turbid waters of the Arve into its 
bosom. The Arve is a furious stream, and comes pouring down 
from Mont Blanc, loaded with the debris of the mountains, till 
it looks like a river of mud. When the clear blue Rhone first 
meets this rash innovator of its purity, it refuses to hold any com- 
panionship with it, and retires in apparent disgust to the opposite 
bank, and for a long way the waters flow on with the separating 
line between the muddy white and pellucid blue, as clearly drawn 
as the shore itself. But the Arve finally conquers, and fuses all 
its corrupt waters into the Rhone, which never after recovers its 
clearness till it falls into the sea. I followed the bank along 
for some distance, watching with the intensest interest this strug- 
gle between corruption and purity. There was an angry, rash, 
and headlong movement to the turbid Arve, while the stainless 
waters of the Rhone seemed endeavouring, by yielding, to escape 
the contagious touch of its companion. What a striking emblem 
of the steady encroachment of bad principles and desires when 
once admitted into the heart, or of the corrupting influence of 



32 JUNCTION OF THE RHINE AND ARVE. 

bad companionship on a pure mind. The Arve, for the time 
being, seemed endowed with consciousness, and a feeling of 
anger involuntarily arose within me at its unblushing effrontery 
in thus crowding back the beautiful Rhone from its own banks, 
and forcing it to receive its disgusting embrace. The world is 
full of histories of which the Rhone and Arve are the type. 



FREYBOURG ORGAN. 33 



VII. 



FREYBOURG ORGAN AND BRIDGES.— SWISS 
PECULIARITIES. 



Nothing strikes the traveller more than the peculiar customs 
attached to the separate cantons of Switzerland. Although bor- 
dering on each other, and each but a few miles across, yet they 
retain from generation to generation their own peculiar dress and 
money. The traveller becomes perfectly confused with the latter. 
The dress of the female peasantry is not only dissimilar in the dif- 
ferent cantons, but odd as it well can be. In one, the head-dress 
will be an immensely broad-brimmed straw hat, without any per- 
ceptible crown ; in another a man's hat ; in a third a diminutive 
thing perched on the top of the head ; and in a fourth a black 
crape cap, with wings on either side projecting out like huge fans. 
The latter you find in Freybourg, and this reminds me of the two 
magnificent wire bridges in the town itself, and the immense or- 
gan. The latter has 7800 pipes, some of them 32 feet long, and 
64 stops. It is an instrument of tremendous power, and though 
the traveller is compelled to pay eleven francs to hear it on a week- 
day, it is worth the money. At first, one imagines a trick is 
played upon him, and that a full orchestra accompanies the or- 
gan. The mellow tones melt in and float away with the heavier 
notes, as if a band of musicians were playing out of sight. Many 
refuse to believe it is not a deception till they go up and examine 
every part of the instrument. The effect is perfectly bewildering. 
There is the trombone, the clarionet, the flute, the fife, and ever 
and anon, the clear ringing note of the trumpet. The perform, 
ance is closed with an imitation of a thunder storm, in which the 
wonderful power of the instrument is fully tested. At first you 



34 THE TWO SUSPENSION BRIDGES. 

hear the low distant growl swelling up, and then slowly dying 
away. The next peal breaks on the ear with a more distinct and 
threatening sound. Nearer and nearer rolls up the thunder-cloud, 
sending its quick and heavy discharges through the atmosphere, 
till clap follows clap with stunning rapidity, rolling and crashing 
through the building till its solid arches tremble as if the real 
thunders of heaven were bursting overhead. I did not dream 
that a single instrument could possess so much power. 

There are two suspension bridges in Freybourg; one remark- 
able for its great length, the other for its extreme beauty. The 
latter connects the top of two mountains, swinging over a fright- 
ful gulf that makes one dizzy to look down into. There are no 
buttresses or mason-work in sight at a little distance. Shafts are 
sunk in the solid rock of the mountains, down which the wires that 
sustain it are dropped. There it stretches, a mere black line near- 
ly 300 feet in the heavens, from summit to summit. It looks like 
a spider's web flung across a chasm ; its delicate tracery show- 
ing clear and distinct against the sky. While you are looking at 
the fairy creation suspended in mid- heaven, almost expecting the 
next breeze will waft it away, you see a heavy wagon driven on 
it. You shrink back with horror at the rashness that could trust 
so frail a structure at that dizzy height. But the air-hung cob- 
web sustains the pressure, and the vehicle passes in safety. In- 
deed, weight steadies it, while the wind, as it sweeps down the 
gulf, makes it swing under you. 

The large suspension bridge is supported on four cables of iron 
wire, each one composed of 1,056 wires. AstheMenai bridge of 
Wales is often said to be longer than this, I give the dimensions 
of both as I find them in Mr. Murray : Freybourg, length 905 
feet, height 174 feet, breadth 28 feet; Menai, length 580 feet, 
height 130 feet, breadth 25 feet. A span of 905 feet, without any 
intermediate pier, seems impossible at first, and one needs the tes- 
timony of his own eyes before he can fully believe it. 

But to the customs of the Swiss. I do not speak of them here 
because I have witnessed them all thus far on my route, or in any 
part of it, but because they seem to fill out a chapter best just 
here. Of some of these customs I speak as an eye-witness — of 
others simply as a 'historian. There is one connected with edu- 



THE ALP HORN. 35 



cation which exerts a wonderful influence on society. In the 
large towns the children of similar age and sex are gathered to- 
gether by their parents in little societies called societies des diman- 
ches. These little clubs are composed of twelve or fourteen chil- 
dren, selected by the parents with a view to their adaptedness to 
amuse and benefit each other. They meet in turn at the houses 
of the different parents every Sabbath evening. Their nurses are 
with them, and the time is spent in amusements common to chil- 
dren. As they grow older these amusements are combined with 
instruction. This kind of intimacy creates strong friendships 
which last long after they are dispersed and scattered over the 
world, and even through life. Girls thus linked together in child- 
hood retain their affection in maturer life, and even in womanhood 
distinguish each other by the tender appellations of "ma mignon- 
ne," " mon cozur," " mon ange^ This is one great reason why 
Swiss society is so exclusive, and it is so difficult for a stranger 
to press beyond its mere formalities. The rank of the husband 
in Switzerland depends altogether upon that of his wife. Imme- 
diately on their marriage he steps into her rank, be it above or 
below that which he formerly occupied. 

There has been much written about Swiss melodies; and the 
custom of singing in the open air, in that clear high falsetto is 
singularly wild and thrilling. The cow herds and dairy maids 
seem never weary of mingling their voices together in the clear 
mountain air of the Alps. The effect of it on the traveller is of- 
ten astonishing. Southey, in speaking of it, says, "Surely the 
wildest chorus that was ever heard by human ears: a song not 
of articulate sounds, but in which the voice is used as a mere in- 
strument of music, more flexible than any which art could pro- 
duce ; sweet, powerful and thrilling beyond description." The 
Alp horn, which is merely a tube of wood five or six feet long, 
bound about with birch bark, is capable of the most melodious 
sound, when softened and prolonged by the mountain echoes, I 
ever heard. 

Nothing in my boyhood captivated my imagination more than 
the custom which was said to prevail in Switzerland, of the peas- 
antry calling out to each other, as the last sunlight left the highest 
Alpine peak, — " Praise the Lord." But it loses some of its poe- 



36 VESPERS IN THE ALPS. 

try heard on the spot. It is confined to the more rude and pastoral 
districts in the Catholic cantons. Having no church near to ring 
the accustomed vesper bell, its place is supplied by the Alp horn. 
A cowherd stationed on the highest peaks reclines along some 
rock, and as the golden sunlight leaves the last heaven-piercing 
snow-summit, he utters through his mellow horn the first five or 
six notes of the psalm commencing "Praise ye the Lord." The 
strain is caught up and prolonged by the mountain echoes and 
answered from other distant peaks, till the soul-thrilling cadences 
seem to die away on the portals of heaven. The tonesof the horn 
are indescribably sweet and subduing, awaking all the dormant 
poetry of a man's nature. But the custom which once seemed to 
me to be the very embodiment of religion and poetry together, ap- 
peared, after all, a very business-like and prosaic matter. It be- 
ing necessary to carry out the Catholic observance, a horn is sub- 
stituted for the vesper bell, which one hears ringing every evening 
in Catholic countries for the same purpose. There is just as 
much religion in the call of the muezzin from the minaret of some 
Moslem tower, which one hears at every turn in Turkey. Nay 
this very custom, which has been more spoken of, more poetized, 
perhaps, than all others, prevails in some parts of our own country. 
I remember being in my grown-up boyhood once in an Indian 
missionary station of the Methodist denomination, where a similar 
expedient was adopted. Strolling at evening along the banks of 
a stream, I suddenly heard the prolonged blast of a horn sound- 
ing very much like a dinner horn. Its long continuance at that 
time of night awakened my curiosity, and on inquiring the cause 
of it, I was informed it was to call the Indians to prayer meeting. 
A conch shell had supplied the place of a bell. Bending my own 
steps thither, I arrived just in time to find a low school-house 
crowded with dusky visages, while the whole multitude was sing- 
ing at the top of their voices "Old ship Zion." Here was the 
Alpine custom on which so much sentiment has been expended, 
but combined with vastly more sense and religion. 

At the sound of this vesper bell, alias Alp horn, the peasants 
uncover their heads, and falling on their knees repeat their even- . 
ing prayers, and then shut up their cattle and retire to their 
homes. 



RANZ DES VACHES. 37 

The " Ranz des Vetches" which is commonly supposed to be a 
single air, stands in Switzerland for a class of melodies, the lite- 
ral meaning of which is cow-rows. The German word is Kurei- 
hen — rows of cows. It derives its origin from the manner the 
cows march home along the Alpine paths at milking time. The 
shepherd goes before, keeping every straggler in its place by the 
tones of his I orn, while the whole herd wind along in Indian file 
obedient to the call. From its association it always creates 
home-sickness in a Swiss mountaineer when he hears it in a for- 
eign land. It is said these melodies are prohibited in the Swiss 
regiments attached to the French army because it produces so 
many desertions. One of the " Ranz des Vaches" brings back to 
his imagination his Alpine cottage — the green pasturage — the 
bleating of his mountain goats — the voices of the milk-maids, and 
all the sweetness and innocence of a pastoral life ; till his heart 
turns with a sad yearning to the haunts of his childhood and the 
spot of his early dreams and early happiness. 

The Swiss retain their old fondness for rifle shooting-, and there 
is annually a grand rifle match at some of the large towns, made 
up of the best marksmen in all Switzerland. There are also 
yearly contests in wrestling called Zwing Feste, the most distin- 
guished wrestlers at which are from Unterwalden, Appenzel and 
Berne. Goitre and Cretinism prevail in some parts of the Alps 
to a fearful extent, and have prevailed for ages if we can believe 
Juvenal, who asks — 

" Quis tumidum guttur miratur in Alpibus?" 

Goitre, it is well known, is a swelling of the thyroid gland or ad- 
joining parts in front of the neck. It increases with years and 
hangs down on the breast in a most disgusting and shocking man- 
ner. The painful spectacle almost destroys one's pleasure in 
travelling in many parts of the Alps. Cretinism inhabits the 
same localities, and is still more painful, for it affects the mind. 
The limbs become shrivelled and shrunk, the head enlarged, and 
the afflicted being an idiot. He. sits in the sun all day long, and 
as you approach clamours piteously for money. Dr. McClelland 
made experiments over a territory of more than a thousand square 
miles, to test the> effect of certain localities on this disease. Mr. 

14 



38 GOITRE CRETINIM. 

Murray quotes from him the following statement showing the pro- 
portion between the healthy and sick : as the result of his obser- 
vation, 

Granite and gneiss — goitre 1-500 ; cretins none. 

Mica slate and hornblende slate— goitre none ; cretins none. 

Clay slate — goitre 1-136; cretins none. 

Transition slate — goitre 1-149 ; cretins none. 

Steatic sandstone — goitre none ; cretins none. 

Calcareous rock — goitre 1-3 ; cretins 1-32. 

Thus it is seen that low and moist places are more subject to 
these diseases, while the high and dry portions are comparatively 
exempt. Confined vallies and ground frequently overflowed are 
also unfavorable localities. The goitre is hereditary, but does 
not make its appearance till puberty. It is more common among 
the females than males. 

How singular it is that among the most glorious scenery on the 
earth, we find man subject to a disease that deforms him the most. 
And what is still more singular, it is among the most beautiful 
vallies in all the Alps that the inhabitants are peculiarly subject 
to these diseases. Thus beauty and deformity go hand in hand 
over the world. 



SCENERY ABOUT INTERLACHEN. 39 



VIII. 



INTERLACHEN, PASS OF THE WENGERN ALP, 
BYRON'S MANFRED. 



Interlachen is as sweet a valley as ever slept in the bosom of 
nature. At a little distance from it, Lake Thun, with its placid 
sheet of water, stretches up towards Berne, serving as a mirror to 
the snow-peaks of Stockhorn, Wiesen, Eigher and Moneh, that 
rise in solemn majesty from its quiet shore. An English yacht 
has been turned into a steamboat, whose tiny proportions remind 
one more of a slender model in a toy-shop than a real practical 
steamboat. 

Interlachen seems out of the world, and its retired position and 
magnificent scenery have converted it into an English colony; for 
two-thirds of the summer visitors are Englishmen. All the 
houses seem " pensions" or boarding houses, and with their white- 
washed walls and large piazzas burst on you at every step from 
amid the surrounding trees. Set back in the bosom of the Alps, 
with the Jungfrau rising in view — its endless rides and shaded 
walks make it one of the sweetest spots in the world. And then 
in summer, the contrast between the richly clad visitors that swarm 
it in every direction, and the rustic appearance of the peasantry 
and the place itself, make it seem more like a dream-land. Near 
by are the ruins of the castle of Unspunnen, the reputed resi- 
dence of Manfred. Standing as it does in the ve-ry midst of the 
scenery in which that drama is laid, Byron doubtless had it in 
mind when he wrote it. Near by, in the quiet valley, there are 
every year gymnastic games among the peasantry, such as wrest- 
ling, pitching the stone, &c. These games owed their origin to 
a touching incident in the history of Burkhard, the last male de- 



40 THE GORGE OF LUTSCHINE. 

scendant of the family who owned the castle. A young knight 
belonging to the court of Berchtold of Zahringen fell in love with 
Ida, the only daughter of the proud Burkhard ; but as a deadly 
feud had long subsisted between the two families, the old baron 
sternly refused his consent to the marriage. The result was that 
the young Rudolph scaled the castle walls one night, and, carry- 
ing off the willing Ida, made her his bride. A bloody war com- 
menced, which was carried on without advantage to either party. 
At length, one day, as the old baron was sitting moodily in his 
room, pondering on his desolate condition, the door gently opened, 
and young Rudolph and Ida stood before him, holding their beau- 
tiful and fair-haired boy by the hand. Without attendants, alone 
and unarmed, they had thrown themselves in simple faith, on the 
strength of a father's love. The silent appeal was irresistible. 
The old man opened his arms, and his children fell in tears on 
his bosom. He received them into his castle, made Rudolph heir 
to his vast possessions, and said, " Let this day be forever cele- 
brated among us." Rustic games were established in conse- 
quence, and now, with every return of the day, the sweet valley 
of Interlachen- rings with the mirth of the mountaineer. 

It was a dark and gloomy morning when we started for Lau- 
terbrunnen. An Alpine storm swept through the valley, and the 
heaving, lifting clouds buried the snow-peaks around in impene- 
trable mist, leaving only the black bases in sight. The rain 
fell as if the clouds themselves were falling. 

In the midst of this storm we plunged into the savage gorge of 
the Lutschine, and entered upon a scene of indescribable gran- 
deur and gloom. Perpendicular cliffs rose on each side, against 
which the angry clouds were dashing in reckless energy, while 
the black torrent of the Lutschine went roaring by, flinging its 
spray even to our carriage wheels. As we emerged into the val- 
ley of Lauterbrunnen, a peasant girl came to the side of the car- 
riage, with a little basket of strawberries in her hand, and trotted 
along by our side, singing one of those strangely wild Alpine 
chorusses, made doubly so by the clear, ringing falsetto tone in 
which they are sung. At Lauterbrunnen we breakfasted in a 
cold room. I ate with my cloak on, stopping now and then to 
warm my hands over the tea-pot. Suddenly a burst of sunlight 



FALLS OF STAUBACH. 41 

told us the storm had broken. A general " hurra !" hailed the 
cheering omen, and in a moment all was bustle and preparation 
for a march over the Wengern Alp. 

Nearly 20 miles were before us, and to be made at the rate 
of about two and a half miles per hour. I let my companions 
march on, while I paid a hasty visit to the falls of Staubach, 
(dust-fall) so named because the water, falling from the height 
of 800 or 900 feet, is dashed into mist before it reaches the bot- 
tom. It comes leaping right over the top of the mountain in its 
bold, desperate plunge for the valley. Byron, in describing it, 
says, " The torrent is in shape, curling over the rock, like the 
tail of a white horse streaming in the wind ; such as it might be 
conceived would be that of the pale horse on which Death is 
mounted in the Apocalypse. It is neither mist nor water : but 
something between both. Its immense height gives it a wave or 
curve— a spreading here and a condensation there — wonderful 
and indescribable." After getting pretty well soaked in its 
spray, I plucked a blue flower near its foot, and turned to join 
my companions, who were .now slowly winding up the opposite 
mountain in a narrow mule-path, that seemed itself to have a 
hard struggle to master the bold hill. Up and up we panted, 
now rejoicing in the clear sunlight, and now drenched in rain as 
a cloud dashed over us. Reaching at length a long slope of pas- 
turage land, I ran to the edge of a precipice and looked down on 
the valley of Lauterbrunnen, now dwindled to a green ditch — and 
across on Staubach, that seemed merely a silver thread dangling 
over the rock. The echo of the woodman's axe came at intervals 
across the valley, whose shining steel I could see through my 
glass, coming down for a second blow ere the sound of the first 
could reach me. 

Pressing slowly up the ascent, my steps were suddenly arresi- 
ed by one of the sweetest, clearest tones I ever heard. Rich, 
mellow and full, it rose and fell in heart-piercing melody along 
the mountain. It was the Alpine horn. This instrument, which 
I have described befcre, is a great favourite of the Swiss. A 
young mountaineer lay stretched on a rock, across which the 
horn rested, and saluted us as we approached with one of the 
wildest yet softest strains I ever listened to. He had selected a 



42 THE ALP-HORN. 



spot where the echo was the clearest and the longest prolonged, 
and I stood in perfect raptures as the sound was caught up by- 
peak after peak, and sent back in several distinct echoes. Long 
after the mountaineer had ceased blowing would the different 
peaks take up the simple notes and throw them onward, refined 
and softened till it seemed like a concert of unseen beings breath- 
ing their mellowest strains in responsive harmony. I looked on 
those awfully wild precipices that scoffed the heavens with their 
jagged and broken summits, with increased respect every mo- 
ment, from the sweet rich tones they were thus able to send back. 
But I must confess they were the roughest looking choristers I 
ever saw perform. It seemed really a great feat to make such 
music, and I thought I would try my skill ; so putting my mouth 
to the instrument I blew away — Heavens! what a change! — 
every mountain seemed snarling at me, and the confused echoes 
finally settled down into a steady growl. I gave back the horn 
to the young mountaineer, while the peaks around suddenly fell 
fifty per cent, in my estimation. 

A July sun pretended to be shining, but we soon after came 
on fresh snow that had fallen the night before. Byron pelted 
Hillhouse on this spot with snow- balls — / pelted my guide, though 
the poor fellow had not the faintest idea, as he dodged and ducked 
his head to escape the balls, that I was making him stand as rep- 
resentative of Hillhouse. Before us rose the Jungfrau, clothed 
with snow of virgin purity from the base to the heaven-piercing 
summit. A deep ravine separates the path of the traveller from 
the mountain, which from its colossal size so destroys the effect 
of distance, that although miles intervene, it seems but a few 
rods off. 

Reaching the chalet near the summit, we stopped to rest and 
to hear the roar of avalanches, that fell every few minutes from 
the opposite mountains. I wish I could convey some idea of the 
stupendous scenery that here overwhelms the amazed spectator. 
Look up and up, and see the zenith cut all up with peaks, white 
as unsullied snow can make them, while ever and anon adown 
their pure bosoms streams the reckless avalanche, filling these 
awful solitudes with its thunder, till the heart stops and trembles 
in the bosom. I never before stood so humbled in the presence 



WONDERFUL ECHO. 43 

of nature. Sometimes you would see the avalanches as they 
rushed down the mountain, and sometimes you caught only their 
roar, as they fell from the opposite side of some cliff, into a gulf 
untrod by foot of man or beast. 

Byron says, in his journal of the view from the summit, " On 
one side our view comprised the Jungfrau with all her glaciers, 
then the Dent d'Argent, shining like truth ; then the little giant 
and the great giant; ^and last, not least, the Wetterhorn. Heard 
the avalanches falling every five minutes nearly. The clouds 
rose from the opposite valley curling up perpendicular precipices, 
like the foam of the ocean of hell during springtide — it was white 
and sulphury, and immeasurably deep in appearance." 

The keeper of the chalet had a small Mortar, which he fired 
off at our request. Ten distinct echoes came back. From deep 
and awful silence these innumerable peaks seemed aroused into 
sudden and almost angry life. Report after report, like the rapid 
discharge of a whole bank of artillery, thundered through the clear 
air. At length the echoes one by one sunk slowly away, and I 
thought all was over. Fainter and fainter they grew till nothing 
but a low rumbling sound was heard in the distance, when sud- 
denly, without warning or preparation, there was a report like the 
blast of the last trumpet. I instinctively clapped my hands to my 
ears in affright. It came from the distant Wetterhorn, and rolled 
and rattled and stormed through the mountains, till it seemed as 
if every peak was loosened from its base, and all were falling and 
crushing together. It was absolutely terrific. Its fearful echo 
had scarcely died away before the avalanches which the sudden 
jar had loosened began to fall. Eight fell in almost as many 
minutes. The thunder of one blended in with the thunder of 
another, till one continuous roar passed along the mountains. 
The tumult ceased as suddenly as it commenced and the deep 
and awful silence that followed was painful ; and my imagination 
painted those falling masses of snow and ice as half-conscious 
monsters, crushed to death in the deep ravines. 

But every flight has its fall ; and I was brought back to mat- 
ters of fact most effectually by the very respectful request of the 
man who fired the mortar for his pay. On asking how much he 
demanded I found that the avalanches had cost a trifle over three 



44 "VIEWS FROM THE WENGERN ALP. 

cents apiece, to say nothing of the echoes and the hurly burly in 
general. This was getting them dirt cheap, and I burst into a 
laugh that might have started another avalanche without any 
great violation of avalanche principles. 

But, seriously, this multiplication and increased power of a 
single echo was something entirely new to me, and I could not 
have believed it possible had I not heard ii. Speaking of it af- 
terwards to a German professor, he remarked that the same thing 
once happened to him in the Tyrol. He was travelling with an 
English nobleman, and had come to a quiet lake amid the moun- 
tains on the shores of which the nobleman sat dropping pebbles 
into the clear water and watching their descent to the bottom. 
The professor had heard of the wonderful echo in this spot; so, 
carefully drawing a pistol from his pocket, he suddenly fired it 
behind the Englishman. The report that followed was like the 
breaking up of the very foundations of nature. The nobleman 
clapped his hands to his ears and fell on his face, thinking an 
avalanche was certainly upon him. 

About two miles from this chalet is the summit of the pass, 
6280 feet above the level of the sea, or higher than the highest 
mountain in the United States ; — while around rise peaks seven 
thousand feet higher still. The view from this spot is indescri- 
bable. The words "sublime," "grand," "awful," &c. cease to 
have a meaning here to one who has applied them to so much 
less objects. The mind reaches out for words to express its emo- 
tions and finds none. The Jungfrau or Virgin — now no longer 
virgin since a few adventurous feet have profaned the pure white 
summit — the Monch — the Great and Little Eighers, or giants, and 
peaks innumerable tear up the heavens on every side, while a 
mantle of snow is wrapped over all. Glaciers cling around these 
heaven high peaks and go streaming in awful splendour into the 
cavities between, where they flow out into icy seas from which 
the sunbeams flash back as from ten thousand silver helmets. 
On this spot, amid this savage and overwhelming scenery, Byron 
says he composed a part of his Manfred. It is his own soliloquy 
as he gazes upward, that he puts in the mouth of Manfred. 

" Ye toppling crags of ice — 
Ye avalanches, whom a breath draws down 



MANFRED. 45 



In mountainous o'erwhelming, come and crush me! 

I hear ye momently above, beneath, 

Crush with a frequent conflict, but ye pass 

And only fall on things that still would live ; 

On the young flourishing forest, or the hut 

And hamlet of the harmless villager. 

The mists boil up around the glaciers ; clouds 

Rise curling fast beneatr me, white and sulphury 

Like foam from the roused ocean of deep hell." 

There is no work of the fancy here, no creation of the poet — it 
is simple description — the plain English of what passes before 
the traveller who stands here in early summer. The awful si- 
lence that follows the crash of an avalanche adds tenfold sub- 
limity and solitude to the Alps. 

After having gazed our fill we mounted our animals and began 
to descend. But the snow-crust would give way every few steps, 
when down would go horse and rider. After having been thrown 
two or three times over the head of my animal, I picked myself 
ud for the last time, and with the sullen unamiable remark that he 
might take care of himself, made my way on foot. Coming at 
length to solid ground I looked back to see how he got along, and 
could not but laugh at the sorry figure he cut in the snow. The 
crust would bear him for several steps, when down he would go 
to his girth. Extricating himself with great care he would step 
gingerly along with nose close to the surface and half crouched 
up as if he expected every moment another tumble. His ex- 
pectations I must say were seldom disappointed; till at length 
when he came to where I stood he looked as meek and subdued 
as a whipped hound. 

Mounting, we rode away for the valley of Grindelwald. 



46 VALLEY OF GRINDELWALD. 



IX. 

THE GRAND SCHEIDECK: AN AVALANCHE. 



The little valley of Grindelwald received us as we descended 
the Wengern Alp. Before entering it, as we passed down the 
mountain, up to our hips in snow, one of those picturesque scenes 
which so often occur in Switzerland burst upon us. From a 
deep valley directly beneath us, smiling in all the freshness of 
summer vegetation, came the tinkling of hundreds of bells. The 
green pasturage was literally covered with herds of cattle, and 
flocks of goats. All around, rose the gigantic snow peaks and 
hung the fearful precipices, while there on that green secluded 
spot was the complete impersonation of repose and quiet. The 
music of those countless bells rung and mingled in the clear 
mountain air in endless variations, and were sent back by the giant 
peaks, redoubled and multiplied, till there was a perfect storm of 
sound. As I passed down through the snow, the echoes grew 
fainter and fainter, till the mountains held them all in their own 
bosom — yet that scene of quietness and beauty has left its' im- 
pression forever on my heart. 

As I descended into the valley of Grindelwald, and saw the 
brown huts sprinkled all over the distant slopes, I felt how hard 
it must be to conquer Switzerland. When an army had wound 
over the narrow and difficult pass, and driven back the hardy 
mountaineers, and burned up their homes, still they had not con- 
quered them. Hid amid hollows and fastnesses, unknown to their 
enemies, they could put them at defiance forever. 

While tea was preparing, I walked through the valley and past 
the parsonage, into which the minister and his two daughters 



A GLACIER. 47 



were just entering, from their evening walk. The valley lay in 
deep shadow, while the last sunbeams still lingered on a distant 
glacier, that shone like burnished silver in the departing light. 
That sweet parsonage, in that quiet spot, amid the everlasting 
Alps and the roar of its torrents and avalanches, seemed almost 
beyond the reach of heart-sickening cares and disappointments. 
I grew weary of my roving, and felt that I had found at last one 
spot out of human ills. Just then, I remembered that the pastor 
and his two daughters were clad in deep mourning. " Ah !" I 
sighed, as I turned away, " death has been here, turning this 
quiet spot into a place of tears. He treads an Alpine valley with 
as firm a step and unrelenting a mien as the thronged street; 
and man may search the world over, and he will only find at last 
a spot on which to grieve." 

While at tea, three peasant girls came into the room and began 
one of their Alpine choruses, in that high, clear falsetto you hear 
nowhere but in Switzerland. These chants are singularly wild 
and thrilling, and in the present instance were full of sweetness; 
but their effect was lost the moment I remembered it was all done 
for money. 

The day had been one of toil, and the night was disturbed and 
restless. Unable to sleep, I rose about midnight and looked out 
of my window, and lo ! the moon hung right over a clear, cold 
glacier, that seemed almost within reach of my hand. The silent, 
white and mighty form looked like a monster from the unseen 
world, and I fairly shuddered as I gazed on it. It seemed to hang 
over the little hamlet like a cold and silent foe. In the morn- 
ing, I went under it. These masses of ice melt in the summer, 
where they strike the valley, and the superincumbent weight 
presses down, urging up rocks and earth that no power of man could 
stir. This slowly descending glacier had done its share of this 
work, and had thrown up quite a hill, where it had plunged its 
mighty forehead in the earth ; but had encountered in its passage one 
rock that seemed a mere projection from the solid stratum below, 
and hence could not be moved. The glacier had therefore 
shoved slowly over it, leaving a cave running from the foot up to 
where the rock lay imbedded in it. I entered this cave, and the 
green and blue roof was smooth as polished silver, while a pool at 



48 AN AVALANCHE. 



the bottom, acting as a mirror to this mirror, perfectly bewildered 
the eye in looking into it. 

There are two glaciers that descend entirely into the valley, 
and push their frozen torrents against the bosoms of the green 
pasturages. Their silvery forms fringed with fir trees, while 
their foreheads are bathed in the green meadow below, furnish 
a striking contrast to the surrounding scenery. One can ascend 
for nearly four miles along the margin of the lower glacier on 
his mule, and will be amply repaid for the trouble. It was on 
this glacier that the clergyman of Vevay, M. Mouron, was lost 
— the account of which is in almost every book of travels. It 
was supposed at first that his guide had murdered him ; but after 
twelve days search his body was found at the bottom of a crevice 
in the ice, said to be seven hundred feet deep. A guide was let 
down to the bottom by a rope, with a lantern round his neck, and 
after descending twice in vain, the third time was drawn up with 
the body in his arms. He was much broken and bruised, but it 
was impossible to tell whether he was killed instantly by the fall, 
or whether he lay crushed in that awful chasm, breathing his life 
away in protracted gasps. 

Mounting our horses, we started for the grand Scheideck, near- 
ly eight thousand feet above the level of the sea. As we ap- 
proached that '• peak of tempests" — the Wetterhorn — whose bare 
cliff rose straight up thousands of feet from the path to the regions 
of eternal snow, one of the guides exclaimed — " Voila ! voila !" 
and another in German, " Sehen sie ! sehen sie I" while I scream- 
ed in English, Look ! look ! And it was time to look ; for from 
the topmost height of the Wetterhorn suddenly arose something 
like white dust, followed by a movement of a mighty mass, and 
the next moment an awful white form leaped away, and, with 
almost a single bound of more than two thousand feet,* came di- 
rectly into our path, a short distance before us. As it struck the 
earth, the crushed snow rose like vapour from the foot of a cata- 
ract, and rolled away in a cloud of mist over a hill of fir trees, 
which it sprinkled white in its passage. The shock was like a 

* The guide said between two and three thousand feet. I have tried in vain 
to ascertain the exact distance from the top to the path. 



THE WITTERHORN. 49 

falling rock, and the echo sounded along the Alpine heights like 
the roll of far off cannon, and died away over their distant tops. 
One of the guides, belonging to a Scotch gentleman who had that 
morning joined our party, was an old traveller in the Alps, and 
he said that in all his wanderings he had never seen any thing 
equal to it. That serene peak, resting far away up in the clear, 
rare atmosphere — the sudden commotion, and that swift descend- 
ing form of terror, are among the distinct and vivid things of 
memory. 

As we rounded the point where this avalanche struck, we came 
nearly under the most awful precipice that I ever saw or dream- 
ed of. How high that perpendicular wall of Alpine limestone 
may be I dare not hazard a conjecture, but it makes one hold his 
breath in awe and dread to look upon it. The highest church 
spire in America would have been a miniature toy beside it. 
Crawling along like mere insects past the base of this " peak of 
tempests," as its name signifies, we began to ascend the last slope 
of the grand Scheideck. When about halfway up I stopped for 
a long time, hoping I might see another avalanche spring away 
from its high resting place. I was fairly out of harm's way, and 
hence could enjoy the bold leap of a snow precipice from the cliffs 
of the Wetterhorn. I was the more anxious, as avalanches are 
generally, to the eye, mere slender torrents streaming down the 
mountain side. The distance dwindles the roaring, thundering 
mass to a mere rivulet, but this was massive and awful enough 
for the gods themselves. But I waited in vain. The bright sun 
fell full on the dazzling top, but not a snow-wreath started, and I 
turned away disappointed towards the top of the pass. 

The descent into Meyringen was charming. After having 
passed through the Schwartzwald (dark wild), we came upon a 
perfectly level, smooth and green pasturage. A gentle rivulet 
skirted the side of it, while at one end stood a single Swiss cot- 
tage. I left the path that went into the hills from the farther 
corner, and rode to the end and looked back. From my horse's 
feet, up to the very cliffs that frown in savage grandeur over it, 
went that sweet greensward ; while at the left rose a glacier of 
the purest white that fairly dazzled the eyes as the s'unbeams fell 
in their noontide splendour upon it. That beautiful, quiet plat 



50 AN ALPINE VALLEY. 

of ground— the dark fir trees environing it— the cliffs that leaned 
above it, and that spiritually, white glacier contrasting with the 
bright green below, combined to form a group and a picture that 
seemed more like a vision than a real scene. I gazed in silent 
rapture upon it, drinking in the beauty and strangeness of that 
scene, till I longed to pitch my tent there forever. That level 
greensward seemed to rest like a fearless, innocent child in the 
rough embrace of the great forms around it. It was to me the 
gem of Alpine vallies. 

There is no outward emblem of peace and quietness so striking 
as one of these green spots amid the Alps. The surface of a 
summer lake stirred by no breeze — the quiet night and quieter 
stars are not so full of repose. The contrast is not so great. 
Place that quiet lake amid roaring billows, and the repose it 
symbolised would be doubly felt. So amid the Alps. The aw- 
ful scenery that folds in one of these sweet spots of greensward 
makes it seem doubly sweet and green. It imparts a sort of con- 
sciousness to the whole, as if there was a serene trust, a feeling 
of innocence in the brightly smiling meadow. It seems to let it- 
self he embraced by those rude and terrific forms without the least 
fear, and smiles back in their stern and savage faces, as if it knew 
it could not be harmed. And the snow peaks and threatening 
precipices look as if proud of their innocent child, guarding it 
with savage tenderness. What beauty God has scattered over 
the earth ! On the frame-work of the hills, and the valleys they 
enclose — : on cliff and stream, sky and earth, He has drawn the 
lines of beauty and grandeur with a pencil that never errs. But 
especially amid the Alps does he seem to have wrought with sub- 
limest skill. All over its peaks and abysses has he thrown the 
mantle of his Majesty ; while its strong avalanches, falling all 
alone, into solitudes where the foot of man has never trod, and the 
wing of the eagle never stooped, speak " eternally of Him." 
" The ice hills," as they leap away from their high resting place, 
<•' thunder God !" 



MEYRINGEN. 51 



X. 

YALLEY OF MEYRINGEN -PASS OF BEUNIG. 



As we descended into Meyringen, a Swiss peasant girl came 
running up to me with an Alpine rose in her hand. If it had 
been a spontaneous gift. I could have mused over it for an hour ; 
but given, as it was, for money, destroyed its value, and I placed 
it in my pocket to preserve for an American friend, to whom I 
never designed to mention the circumstance under which it was 
obtained. I stopped a moment to look at the Seilbach (rope fall), 
as it hung in a long white thread from the cliff; and at the roaring 
torrent of the Reichenbach, and then passed into the valley, which 
was resting below in all the quietness of a summer scene. 

One has peculiar feelings in entering an Alpine valley by one 
of these fearful passes. The awful cliffs that have frowned over 
him — the savage gorges up which his eye has strained — the tor- 
rents and avalanches and everlasting snow that have rolled, and 
fallen, and spread around him, have thrown his whole nature into 
a tumult of excitement. And this stupendous scenery has gone 
on changing, from grand to awful, till feelings of .horror have be- 
come mingled with those of sublimity ; so that when his eye first 
rests on one of these sweet valleys smiling in the sunlight, with 
flocks and herds scattered over its bosom, and peasants' cottages 
standing amid the smooth greensward, the transition and contrast 
are so great, that the quietness and repose of Eden seem suddenly 
opened before him. From those wild and torn mountains, that 
have folded in the path so threateningly, the heart emerges into 
one of these valleys, like the torrent along whose course he has 
trod in awe. The foaming cataracts and dark ravines are all 



52 THE OLD SCHOOLMASTER. 

passed, and the placid stream moves, like a smile, through the 
quiet landscape. 

But this valley, so bright the first day we entered it, became 
dreary enough before we left it. One of those dark, driving Al. 
pine storms set in, and for three days we could not place foot 
out of doors. The chief beauty of the valley consists in the 
two steep parallel ranges of hills enclosing it, now and then 
changing into cliffs, along which white cascades hang, as if sus- 
pended there, while far distant snow peaks rise over one another 
in every direction. The Lake of Brienze peeps modestly into 
the farther end of it, enclosed by its ramparts of mountains. Ta- 
king a carriage to the head of the lake, we there hired a boat to 
Griesbaek falls. A man and his wife rowed us. After clamber- 
ing up and down the falls, and under them, and seeing logs which 
one of the party threw in above, leap away from their brink, we 
went in to see the " Old Schoolmaster," and hear him and his chil- 
dren and grandchildren sing Alpine songs, while the white water- 
fall played a sort of bass accompaniment. The singing was very 
fine — the best we heard in Switzerland, and after having pur- 
chased some nick-nacks and music, and paid beforehand for a 
farewell on the Alp-horn, which is said to sound very finely 
from this position, we embarked once more upon the lake. The 
" Old Schoolmaster" told us it was far better to hear the Alp-horn 
when we had got out on the lake. Never supposing he would de- 
ceive us, we laid by on our oars for a long time, but in vain. 
He had fairly Jewed us. 

The cliffs around this valley send down fearful torrents in the 
spring, one of which — the Alpbach — has once buried a large part 
of the village twenty feet deep With mud and stones. The church 
was filled eighteen feet deep, and the black line, indicating the 
high water mark, is still visible on the walls. The last leap of 
the Alpbach is right over a precipice clear into the valley. From 
the peculiar manner in which the sun strikes it, a triple rainbow 
is formed — one of them making a complete circle around your 
feet. To see this last, it is necessary to enter the mist, and take 
a beautiful drenching ; but I was repaid for it, by seeing myself, 
once in my life, with a real halo around me, and that too around 
my feet. The beautiful ring held me in its embrace like an en- 



LAKE OF LUNGERN. 53 

chanted circle, until the drenching mist, having finally penetrated 
to my skin, broke the charm. I went shivering home, protesting 
against rainbows being put in such inconvenient places. 

The pass of the Brunig is a mere bridle path, but it presents 
nothing striking to the traveller, except the charming view of the 
valley of Meyringen, from its summit. It is a perfect picture. 

The lake of Lungern, which we passed soon after descending 
the Brunig, presents a most singular appearance. It has been 
drained twenty feet below its original level, and the steep banks 
that mark its former height, surround it like some old ruined wall. 
The Kaiserstuhl, a high ridge, was stretched across the foot of the 
lake, forming a natural dam, and heaping up the water twenty 
feet higher than the valley below. A tunnel, 1,300 feet long, was 
bored through this, with only a thin partition of rock left to hold 
back the flood. Five hundred men were employed on it, reliev- 
ing each other constantly, and for several hours at a time : for 
the impossibility of ventilating the tunnel from above, made the 
air very foul and dangerous. When the work was completed, 
and floodgates constructed below to graduate the rush of the water, 
nine hundred and fifty pounds of powder were placed in the far- 
ther extremity of the tunnel. It was midwinter, and the lake 
frozen over, but multitudes assembled on the morning appointed 
for the explosion to witness the result. The surrounding hills 
were covered with spectators, when a cannon shot from the Kai- 
serstuhl, answered by another from the Laudenberg, announced 
that the hour had arrived. A daring Swiss entered the tunnel 
and fired the train. He soon reappeared in safety, while the vast 
multitude stood in breathless anxiety, waiting the explosion. The 
leaden minutes wore on, yet no one felt the shock. ■ At length, at 
the end of ten minutes, just as they had concluded it was a fail- 
ure, two distinct tho.igh dull reports were heard. The ice lay 
smooth and unbroken as ever, and there was a second disappoint- 
ment, for all supposed the mine had not burst through the parti- 
tion. But, at length, there was a shout from below, and a black 
stream of mud and water was seen to issue from the opening, 
showing that the work was done. This drainage was to recover 
a large tract of land, which was a mere swamp. The object was 



54 ALPNACH SLIDE. 



secured, but the land is hardly worth the tilling. The geologist, 
however, will regard the portion laid bare with interest. 

As we approached Lucerne, we passed the location of the fa- 
mous Alpnach slide, made during the time of Bonaparte, for the 
purpose of bringing timber for ship-building from the mountains. 
It was eight miles long, and between three and four feet wide, 
and was made of logs fastened together, so as to form a sort of 
trough. This trough went across frightful gorges, and in some 
instances under ground. A rill of water was directed into it to 
lessen the friction, and prevent the logs from taking fire. A 
tree, a hundred feet long and four feet in diameter, would shoot 
this eight miles in six minutes. When one of these logs bolted 
from the trough, it would fly like an arrow through the air, and 
if it came in contact with a tree would cut it clean in two. The 
whole work is now destroyed. 

Coming, at length, to Lake Lucerne, we took a boat and row- 
ers, and set off for the town that stands so beautifully at its foot. 
I had been for days in the heart of the Oberland, which contains 
the wildest scenery in the Alps. My meat had been mostly the 
flesh of the Chamois, while the men and the habitations I had 
passed seemed to belong to another world. In one instance, I had 
seen a man carrying boards strapped to his backj between three 
and four miles to his hut, on the high pasturage grounds. There 
was no other way of getting them there. These huts or cottages 
(just as one likes to call them) with their low walls and over- 
hanging roof loaded with stones and rocks, to keep them from be- 
ing blown off when the fierce Alpine storm is on his march, have 
an odd look ; though they are sometimes very picturesque, from 
their position. 

From such scenery and dwellings the sight of a town and 
houses was like a sudden waking up from some strange dream. 



SUWARROW'S PASSAGE OF THE PRAGEL. 55 



XL 

SUWARROW'S PASSAGE OF THE GLARUS. 



At the head of Lake Lucerne stands the little village of Fluel- 
len. It was here that Suwarrow, after forcing the passage of St. 
Gothard, was finally stopped in his victorious course. The lake 
stretched away before him, while there was not a boat with which 
to transport his weary army over. There was no other course 
left him on his route to Zurich but to ascend the heights of the 
Kinzig Culm, a desperate undertaking at the best; and cross into 
the Muotta Thai. This wonderful retreat was made while his 
army, as it hung along the cliffs, was constantly engaged in resist- 
ing the attacks of the enemy. 

It was forty-six years ago, one night in September, that the peace- 
ful inhabitants of the Muotta Thai were struck with wonder at the 
sudden appearance among them of multitudes of armed men of a 
strange garb and language. They had just gathered their herds 
and flocks to the fold, and were seeking their quiet homes that 
slept amid the green pasturages, when, like a mountain torrent, 
came pouring out from every defile and giddy pass, these strange, 
unintelligible beings. From the heights of the Kinzig Culm — 
from precipices the shepherds scarce dared to tread, they streamed 
with their confused jargon around the cottages of these simple 
children of the Alps. It was Suwarrow, with twenty-four thou- 
sand Russians at his back, on his march from Italy to join the 
allied forces at Zurich. He had forced the passage of St. Go- 
thard, and had reached thus far when he was stopped by Lake 
Lucerne, and was told that Korsakow and the main Russian army 
at Zurich had been defeated. Indignant and incredulous at the 
report, he would have hung the peasant who informed him, as a 



56 BATTLE OF MUOTTA THAL. 

spy, had not the lady-mother of St. Joseph's Nunnery interceded 
in his behalf. Here in this great Alpine valley the bold com- 
mander found himself completely surrounded. Molitor and his 
battalions looked down on him from the heights around the Muot- 
ta Thai: Mortier and Massena blocked its mouth : while Le- 
courbe hung on his rear. The Russian bear was denned, and 
compelled, for the first time in his life, to order a retreat. He 
wept in indignation and grief, and adopted the only alternative 
left him, to cross the Pragel into Glarus. Then commenced one 
of those desperate marches unparalleled in the history of man. 
The passage of the St. Bernard, by Bonaparte, was a comforta- 
ble march compared to it, and Hannibal's world-renowned exploit 
mere child's play, beside it. While the head of Suwarrow's 
column had descended the Pragel and was fighting desperately at 
Naefels, the rear-guard, encumbered with the wounded, was 
struggling in the Muotta Thai with Massena and his battalions. 
Then these savage solitudes shook to the thunder of cannon and 
roar of musketry. . The startled avalanche came leaping from 
the heights, mingling its sullen thunder with the sound of battle. 
The frightened chamois paused on the high precipice to catch 
the strange uproar that filled the hills. — The simple-hearted peas- 
antry saw their green pasturages covered with battling armies, 
and the snow-capped heights crimson with the blood of men. 
Whole companies fell like snow-wreaths from the rocks while 
the artillery ploughed through the dense mass of human flesh 
that darkened the gorge below. For ten successive days had 
these armies marched and combated, and yet here, on the elev- 
enth, they struggled with unabated resolution. Unable to force 
the passage at Naefels, Suwarrow took the desperate and awful 
resolution of leading his weary and wounded army over the 
mountains into the Grisons. 

Imagine, if you can, an awful solitude of mountains and pre- 
cipices and glaciers piled one above another in savage grandeur. 
Cast your eye up one of these mountains, 7,500 feet above the 
level of the sea, along whose bosom, in a zigzag line, goes a nar- 
row path winding over precipices and snow-fields till finally lost 
on the distant summit. Up that difficult path and into the very 



DIFFICULTIES OF THE PASSAGE. 57 

heart of those fearful snow-peaks has the bold Russian resolved to 
lead his 24,000 men. 

To increase the difficulties that beset him and render his 
destruction apparently inevitable, the snow fell, on the morning 
he set out, two feet deep, obliterating all traces of the path, and 
forming a15 it were a winding sheet for his army. In single file, 
and with heavy hearts, that mighty host one after another entered 
the snow-drifts and began the ascent. Only a few miles could 
be made the first day ; and at night, without a cottage in sight, 
without even a tree to kindle for a light around their silent 
bivouacs, the army lay down in the snow with the Alpine crags 
around them for their sentinels. The next day the head of the 
column 'reached the summit of the ridge, and lo! what a scene 
was spread out before them. No one who has not stood on an 
Alpine summit can have any conception of the utter dreariness 
of this region. The mighty mountains, as far as the eye can 
reach, lean along the solemn sky, while the deep silence around 
is broken by the sound of no living thing. Only now and then 
the voice of the avalanche is heard speaking in its low thunder 
tone from the depth of an awful abyss, or the scream of a solitary 
eagle circling round some lofty crag. The bold Russian stood 
and gazed long and anxiously on this scene, and then turned to 
look on his straggling army that far as the eye could see wound 
like a huge anaconda over the white surface of the snow. No 
column of smoke arose in this desert wild to cheer the sight, but 
all was silent, mournful and prophetic. The winding sheet of the 
army seemed unrolled before him. No path guided their foot- 
steps, and ever and anon a bayonet and feather disappeared 
together as some poor soldier slipped on the edge. of a precipice 
and fell into the abyss below. Hundreds overcome and disheart- 
ened, or exhausted with their previous wounds, laid down to die, 
while the cold wind, as it swept by, soon wrought a snow-shroud 
for their forms. The descent on the southern side was worse 
than the ascent. A freezing wind had hardened the snow into a 
crust, so that it frequently bore the soldiers. Their bayonets 
were thrust into it to keep them from slipping, and the weary and 
worn creatures were compelled to struggle every step to prevent 
being borne away over the precipices that almost momentarily 



58 THE DESCENT. 



stopped their passage. Yet even this precaution was often vain 
Whole companies would begin to slide together, and despite every 
effort would sweep with a shriek over the edge of the precipice 
and disappear in the untrodden gulfs below. Men saw their 
comrades, by whose side they had fought in many a battle, shoot 
one after another, over the dizzy verge, striking with their bayo- 
nets as they went, to stay their progress. The beasts of burden 
slipped from above, and rolling down on the ranks below, shot 
away in wild confusion, men and all, into the chasms that yawned 
at their feet. As they advanced, the enemy appeared around on 
the precipices pouring a scattered yet destructive fire into the 
straggling multitude. Such a sight these Alpine solitudes never 
saw — such a march no army ever made before. In looking at 
this pass the traveller cannot believe an army of 24,000 men 
were marched over it through the fresh fallen snow two feet deep. 
For five days they struggled amid these gorges and over these 
ridges, and finally reached the Rhine at Ilanz. For months 
after, the vulture and the eagle hovered incessantly along the line 
of march, and beasts of prey were gorged with the dead bodies. 
Nearly 8,000 men lay scattered among the glaciers and rocks, 
and piled in the abysses, amid which they had struggled for 
eighteen days since they first poured down from the St. Gothard, 
and the peasants say that the bones of many an un buried soldier 
may still be seen bleaching in the ravines of the Jatser. 

No Christian or philanthropist ever stood on a battle field with- 
out mourning over the ravages of war and asking himself when 
that day would come when men would beat their swords into 
ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Yet the evil 
is not felt in all its dreadful reality there. The movements of the 
armies — the tossing of plumes — the unrolling of banners — the 
stirring strains of martial music — the charging squadrons, and 
the might and magnificence of a great battle field disturb the 
imagination and check the flow of human sympathy. 

If he wishes the feelings of horror and disgust in their full 
strength, let him go into the solitude and holiness of nature, and 
see where her pure bosom has been disfigured with the blood of 
her children. Let him see his fellow beings falling by thousands, 
not amid the uproar and excitement ol battle, but under exhaus- 



SUWARROW AND BONAPARTE. 59 

tion, heart-sickness, and despair. Let him behold the ranks 
lying down one after another under the last discouragement to 
die, while their comrades march mournful and silent by. There 
is a cold-bloodedness, a sort of savage malice about this that 
awakens all the detestation of the human bosom. 

Yet the Russian could do no better. The scourge of nations 
had driven him into the strait. The crime and the judgment 
belong to Bonaparte, who thus directly and indirectly crowded 
his generation into the grave. Suwarrow's act was that of a 
brave and resolute man.* 

* The reader of" Napoleon and his Marshals" need not be told that I have 
changed my opinion on this point. 



60 MACDONALD'S GUIDE. 



XII. 

MACDONALD'S PASS OF THE SPLUGEN. 



I was standing on a green Alpine pasturage, looking off upon 
the Splugen Pass which cut its way through the white snow ridge 
that lay against the distant horizon, when my guide interrupted 
my musings by pointing to an aged man sitting by his cottage 
door. "That man," said he, "was one of Macdonald's guides 
that conducted him and his army over the Splugen." He imme- 
diately became an object of great interest to me, and I went and 
sat down by his side, and drew from him many incidents of that 
perilous adventure. "It was forty-three years ago," said, he, 
" when that awful march was made. I was then but twenty-five 
years of age, but I remember it as if it were but yesterday. I 
have made many passes in the Alps, but never one like that. 
That Macdonald Was an awful man. He looked as if he wanted 
to fight the very Alps, and believed that snow-storms could be 
beaten like an army of men." 

" I believe," I replied, " that pass was made in the winter, when 
even foot travellers found it difficult." " Yes ; and the wind blew, 
and the snow drove in our faces, and the avalanches fell as if the 
very Alps were coming down. The snow, too, was so thick at 
times, that we could not see the horses or men ten rods before or 
behind, while the screaming, and yelling, and cursing, made it ten 
times worse. Why, sir, it did no good to cry take care, for no 
one could take care. There we were, up to our arms in snow, 
amid oxen, and horses, and cannon, and soldiers, and compell- 
ed to stand for hours, without getting one rod ahead. Oh, it 
was dreadful to see the poor soldiers. Often I would hear 
an avalar.che comirig from above, and turn to see where it fell, 



DESCRIPTION OF THE PASS. 61 

when it would come thundering straight on to the army, and cut 
it clean in two, leaving a great gap in the lines. A few feathers 
tossing amid the snow, a musket or two flying over the brink, and 
away went men and all into the gulf below. Oh, sir, those poor 
soldiers looked as if they never would fight again — so downcast 
and frightened. It did no good to have courage there, for what 
could courage do against an avalarche! When God fights with 
man, it does no good to resist." In this manner, though not in the 
precise words, the old man rattled on, and it was evident I could 
get nothing from him except separate incidents which gave life and 
vividness to the whole picture. The falling of a single comrade 
by his side, or the struggles of a single war-horse, as he floun- 
dered in the mass of snow that hurried him irresistibly towards 
the gulf, made a more distinct impression on him than the general 
movements of the army. The deep beds of snow and the walls 
of ice he and the peasants were compelled to cut through, were 
more important to him than the order of march, or the discipline 
of the troops. How different is the effect produced on a powerful 
and a common mind by such a scene as this ! One dwells on the 
impression made by the whole. The moral and nhvsical gran- 
deur surrounding it — the obstacles, and the resolution that over- 
cnme them — the savageness of nature, and the sternness that 
dared look it in the face ; combine to make the impression he car- 
ries with him through life. The weak mind, on the other hand, 
never seems to reach to these generalities — never gets to the outer 
circle, but is occupied with details and incidents. 

To understand this march of Macdonald over the Splugen, a 
feat greater by far than Bonaparte's famous passage of the St. 
Bernard, imagine an awful defile leading up to the height of six 
thousand, ficc hundred feel towards heaven — in summer a mere 
bridle path, and in winter a mass of avalanches, and you will 
have some conception of the fearful pass through which Macdonald 
determined to lead fifteen thousand men. The road follows the 
Rhine, here a mere rivulet, which has cut its channel deep in the 
mountains that rise frequently to the height of three thousand feet 
above it. Along the precipices that overhang this turbulent tor- 
rent, the path is cut in the solid rock, now hugging the mountain 
wall like a mere thread, and now shooting in a single arch over 

15 



62 DIFFICULTIES OF THE PASS. 

the gorge that sinks three hundred feet below. Strangely silent 
snow-peaks pierce the heavens in every direction, while dark 
precipices lean out on every side over the abyss. This mere 
path crosses and re- crosses again this gorge, and often so high 
above it, that the roar of the mad torrent below can scarcely be 
heard ; and finally strikes off on to the bare face of the mountain 
and clambers up to the summit. This is the old road in sum- 
mer time. Now imagine this same gorge swept by a hurricane 
of snow, and filled with the awful sound of falling avalanches, 
blending their heavy shock with the dull roar of the giant pines, 
that wave along the precipices, while half way up from the bot- 
tom to the Alpine top, are hanging like an army of insects, fifteen 
thousand French soldiers ; and you will approach to some know- 
ledge of this wintry pass, and this desperate march. But if you 
have never been in an Alpine gorge, and stood, awe-struck, amid 
the mighty forms that tower away on every side around you, you 
can have no true conception of a scene like the one we are to de- 
scribe. Rocks, going like one solid wall straight up to heaven — 
pinnacles shooting like church spires above the clouds — gloomy 
ravines where the thunder-clouds burst, and the torrent raves — 
still glaciers and solemn snow-fields, and leaping avalanches, 
combine to render an Alpine gorge one of the most terrific things 
in nature. Added to all this, you feel so small amid the mighty 
forms around you — so utterly helpless and worthless, amid these 
great exhibitions of God's power, that the heart is often utterly 
overwhelmed with the feelings that struggle in vain for utterance. 
There is now a carriage road over the Splugen, cut in sixteen 
zigzags along the breast of the mountain. This was not in 
existence when Macdonald made the pass, and there was nothing 
but a bridle path going through the gorge of the Cardinal. Over 
such a pass was Macdonald ordered by Napoleon to march his 
army in the latter part of November, just when the wintry storms 
are setting in with the greatest violence. Bonaparte wished 
Macdonald to form the left wing of his army in Italy, and had 
therefore ordered him to attempt the passage. Macdonald, though 
no braver or bolder man ever lived, felt that it was a hopeless 
undertaking, and immediately despatched General Dumas to 
represent to him the insuperable obstacles in the way. Bona- 



COMMENCEMENT OF THE ASCENT. 63 

parte heard him through his representations, and then replied, 
with his usual recklessness of other people's sufferings or death, 
" I will make no change in my dispositions. Return quickly, 
and tell Macdonald that an army can always pass in every sea- 
son, where two men can place their feet." 

Macdonald, of course, could do no otherwise than obey com- 
mands, and immediately commenced the necessary preparations 
for his desperate undertaking. It was the 26th of November, and 
the frequent storms had covered the entire Alps, pass and all, in 
one mass of yielding snow. His army was at the upper Rhein- 
thal or Rhine valley, at the entrance of the dreadful defile of the 
Via Mala, the commencement of the Splugen pass. The cannon 
were taken from their carriages and placed on sleds, to which 
oxen were harnessed. The ammunition was divided about on the 
backs of mules, while every soldier had to carry, besides his 
usual arms, five packets of cartridges and five days' provision. 
The guides went in advance, and stuck down long black poles to 
indicate the course of the path beneath, while behind them came 
the workmen clearing away the snow, and behind them still, the 
mounted dragoons, with the most powerful horses of the army, to 
beat down the track. On the 26th of November, the first com- 
pany left Splugen, and began the ascent. The pass from Splu- 
gen to Isola is about fifteen miles in length, and the advance com- 
pany had, after the most wasting toil and exhausting effort, made 
nearly half of it, and were approaching the hospice on the sum- 
mit, when a low moaning was heard among the hills, like the 
voice of the sea before a storm. The guides understood too well 
its meaning, and gazed on each other with alarm. The ominous 
sound grew louder every moment, and suddenly the fierce Alpine 
blast swept in a cloud of snow over the mountain, and howled, 
like an unchained demon, through the gorge below. In an in- 
stant all was confusion, and blindness, and uncertainty. The very 
heavens were blotted out, and the frightened column stood and lis- 
tened to the raving tempest that made the pine trees above it sway 
and groan, as if lifted from their rock-rooted places. But suddenly 
another still more alarming sound was heard — " An avalanche ! an 
avalanche !" shrieked the guides, and the next moment an awful 
white form came leaping down the mountain, and striking the 



64 THE ARMY IN A STORM 

column that was struggling along the path, passed straight through 
it into the gulf below, carrying thirty dragoons and their horses 
with it in its wild plunge. The black form of a steed and its 
rider were seen suspended for a moment in mid heavens, amid 
clouds of snow, and the next moment they fell among the ice and 
rocks below, crushed out of the very forms of humanity. The 
head of the column reached the hospice in safety. The other 
part, struck dumb by this sudden apparition crossing their path 
in such lightning-like velocity, bearing to such an awful death 
their brave comrades, refused to proceed, and turned back to the 
village of Splugen. For three days the storm raged amid the 
Alps, filling the heavens with snow, and hurling avalanches into 
the path, till it became so filled up that the guides declared it 
would take fifteen days to open it again so as to make it at all 
passable. But fifteen days Macdonald could not spare. Inde- 
pendent of the urgency of his commands, there was no way to 
provision his -army in these Alpine solitudes, and he must proceed. 
He ordered four of the strongest oxen that could be found to be 
led in advance by the best guides. Forty peasants followed be- 
hind, clearing away and beating down the snow," and two com- 
panies of sappers came after to give still greater consistency to 
the track, while on their heels marched the remnant of the com- 
pany of dragoons, part of which had been borne away three 
days before by the avalanche. The post of danger was given 
them at their own request. Scarcely had they begun the danger- 
ous enterprise, when one of the noble oxen slipped from the preci- 
pice, and with a convulsive fling of his huge frame, went bound- 
ing from point to point of the jagged rocks to the deep, dark tor- 
rent below. 

It was a strange sight for a wintry day. Those three oxen, 
with their horns just peering above the snow, toiled slowly on, 
pushing their unwieldy bodies through the drifts, looking like mere 
specks on the breast of the mountain, while the soldiers, up to 
their breasts, struggled behind. Not a drum or bugle-note cheered 
the solitude, or awoke the echoes of those savage peaks. The 
foot-fall gave back no sound in the soft snow, and the words of 
command seemed smothered in the very atmosphere. Silently 
and noiselessly the mighty but disordered column toiled forward, 



PARTICULARS OF THE ROUTE. 65 

with naught to break the holy stillness of nature, save the fierce 
pantings of the horses and animals, as with reeking sides they 
strained up the ascent. Now and then a fearful cry startled the 
eagle on his high circuit, as a whole company slipped together, 
and with their muskets in their hands, fell into the all-devouring 
gorge that yawned hundreds of feet below their path. It was a 
wild sight, the plunge of a steed and his rider over the precipice. 
One noble horse slipped just as the dragoon had dismounted, and 
as he darted off with his empty saddle, and for a moment hung 
suspended in mid heaven, it is said, he uttered one of those fear- 
ful blood-freezing cries the wounded war-horse is known some- 
times to give forth on the field of battle. The roar of the lion af- 
ter his prey, and the midnight howl of the wolf that has missed 
his evening repast of blood, is a gentle sound compared to it. 
Once heard, it lives in the memory and brain for ever. 

To understand the route of the army better, one should divide 
the pass into three parts. First comes the dark, deep defile, with 
the path cut in the side of the mountain, and crossing backwards 
and forwards over the gorge, on bridges of a single arch, and of- 
ten two and three hundred feet high. The scenery in this gorge 
is horrible. It seems as if nature had broken up the mountains 
in some sudden and fierce convulsion ; and the very aspect of 
everything is enough to daunt one without the aid of avalanches 
or hurricanes of snow. After leaving this defile, the path goes 
for a few miles through the valley of Schams, and then winds up 
the cliffs of La Raffla, covered with pine trees. It then strikes 
up the bare face of the mountain, going sometimes at an angle of 
forty-five degrees, till it reaches the summit; which, lying above 
the region of trees, stands naked and bald in the wintry heavens. 
This is the old road— the new one goes by a different route, and 
in summer-time can be traversed with carriages. Such was the 
road, filled with snow and avalanches, this army of fifteen thou- 
sand men marched over in mid winter- They went over in sep- 
arate columns. The progress and success of the first we have 
already shown. The second and third made the attempt the sec- 
ond and third of December, and achieved the ascent in safety, 
the weather being clear and frosty. Many, however, died of 
cold. Their success encouraged Macdonald to march the whole 

6 



66 PROGRESS OF THE ARMY. 

remaining army over at once, and for this purpose he placed him- 
self at their head, and on the 5th of December commenced the 
ascent. But fresh snow had fallen the night before, covering up 
the entire path, so that the road had all to be made over again. 
The guides refused to go on, but Macdonald would not delay his 
march, and led his weary soldiers breast deep in the snow, up the 
bleak, cold mountain. They were six hours in going less than 
six miles. They could not make a mile an hour in their slow 
progress. They had not advanced far in the defile before they 
came upon a huge block of ice, and a newly-fallen avalanche, 
that entirely filled up the path. The guides halted before these 
obstacles and refused to go on ; and the first that Macdonald 
knew, his army had turned to the right-about, and were marching 
back down the mountain, declaring the passage to be closed. 

Hastening forward, he cheered up the men, and walking him- 
self at the head of the column with a long pole in his hand, to 
sound the depth of the treacherous mass he was treading upon, he 
revived the drooping spirits of the soldiers. "Soldiers," said he, 
"your destinies call you into Italy ; advance and conquer — first 
the mountains and the snow, then the plains and the armies.' 5 
Ashamed to see their leader hazarding his life at every step 
where they refused to go, the soldiers returned cheerfully to their 
toil, and cut their way through the solid hill of ice. But they 
had scarcely surmounted this obstacle, when the voice of the hur- 
ricane on its march was again heard, and the next moment a 
cloud of driving snow obliterated every thing from their view. 
The path was filled up, and all traces of it swept utterly away. 
Amid the screams of the guides, the confused commands of the 
officers, and the howling of the hurricane, was heard the rapid 
thunder-crash of avalanches as they leaped away, at the bidding 
of the tempest, down the precipices. Then commenced again the 
awful struggle of the army for life. The foe they had to contend 
with was an outward one, though not of flesh and blood. To 
sword-cut, bayonet-thrust, and the blaze of artillery, the strong 
Alpine storm was alike invulnerable. On the serried column 
and the straggling line, it thundered with the same reckless pow- 
er. Over the long black line of soldiers, the snow lay like o 
winding-sheet, and the dirge seemed already chanted for the dead 



PASSAGE OF THE LAST DIVISION. 67 

army. No one who has not seen an Alpine storm can imagine 
the reckless energy with which it rages through the mountains. 
The light snow, borne aloft on its bosom, was whirled and scat- 
tered like an ocean of mist over all things'. The drifts were piled 
like second mountains in every direction, and seemed to form in- 
stantaneously, as by the touch of a magician's wand. The blind- 
ing fury of the tempest baffled all efforts to pierce the mystery 
and darkness that. enveloped the host clinging in despair to the 
breast of the mountain. The storm had sounded its trumpet for 
the charge, but no answering note of defiance replied. The 
heroes of so many battle fields stood in still terror before this new 
and mightier foe. Crowding together as if proximity added to 
their security, the broken ranks crouched and shivered to the 
blast that pierced their very bones with its chilling power. But 
this was not all — the piercing cold, and drifting snow, and raving 
tempest, and concealed pit-falls, leading to untrodden abysses, 
were not enough to complete the scene of terror. Suddenly, from 
the summit of the Splugen, avalanches began to fall, whose path 
crossed that of the army. Scaling the breast of the mountain 
with a single leap, they came with a crash on the shivering 
column, and bore it away to the destruction that waited beneath. 
Still, with undaunted front and unyielding will, the bold Macdon- 
ald struggled on in front, inspiring by his example, as he never 
could have done by his commands, the officers and men under 
him. Prodigies were wrought where effort seemed useless. The 
first avalanche, as it smote through the column, paralyzed for a 
moment every heart with fear ; but they soon began to be viewed 
like so many discharges of artillery, and the gaps they made, 
like the gaps a discharge of grape-shot frequently makes in the 
lines on a field of battle. Those behind closed up the rent with 
unfaltering courage. Hesitation was death. The only hope was 
in advancing, and the long and straggling line floundered on in the 
snow, like a huge anaconda winding itself over the mountain. 
Once, as an avalanche cut through the ranks, bearing them away 
to the abyss, a young man was seen to wave an adieu to his 
young comrade left behind, as he disappeared over the crag. 
The surviving companion stept into the path where it had 
swept, and before he had crossed it, a laggard block of ice came 



68 GREATNESS OF THE FEAT. 

thundering down, and bore him away to join his comrade in the 
gulf where his crushed form still lay throbbing. The extreme 
density of the atmosphere, filled as it was with snow, gave ten- 
fold horror to these mysterious messengers of death, as they came 
down the mountain declivities. A low rumbling would be heard 
amid the pauses of the storm, and as the next shriek of the blast 
swept by, a rushing, as if a counter-blast smote the ear; and 
hefore the thought had time to change, a rolling, leaping, broken 
mass of snow burst through the thick atmosphere, and the next 
moment, crushed, with the sound of thunder, far, far below, bear- 
ing along a part of the column to its deep, dark resting-place. 

On the evening of the 6th December, the greater part of the 
army had passed the mountain, and the van had pushed even to 
Lake Como. From the 26th of November to the 6th of Decem- 
ber, or nearly two weeks, had Macdonald been engaged in this 
perilous pass. A less energetic, indomitable man would have 
failed ; and he himself escaped utter destruction, almost by a 
miracle. As it was, he left between one and two hundred men 
in the abysses of the Splugen, who had slipped from the preci- 
pices or been -carried away by avalanches, during the toilsome 
march. More than a hundred horses and mules had also been 
hurled into those untrodden abysses, to furnish food for the eagle, 
and raven, and beasts of pre}^. 

This passage of the Splugen, by an army of fifteen thousand 
men, in the dead of winter, and amid hurricanes of snow and 
falling avalanches, stands unrivalled in the history of the world, 
unless the passage of the Pragel by Suwarrow be its counterpart. 
It is true, Bonaparte spoke disparagingly of it, because he wished 
his passage over the St. Bernard in summer time, to stand alone 
beside Hannibal's famous march over the same mountain. With 
all his greatness, Bonaparte had some miserably mean traits of 
character. He could not bear to have one of Ins generals per- 
form a greater feat than himself, and so he deliberately lied about 
this achievement of Macdonald. In his despatches to the French 
government, he made it out a small affair, while he had the impu- 
dence to declare that this " march of Macdonald produced no 
good effect." Now one of three things is true : Bonaparte either 
was ignorant of his true situation, and commanded the passage 



BONAPARTE'S DISHONESTY. G9 

of the Splugen to be made under a false alarm ; or else it was a 
mere whim, in which his recklessness of the lives and comfort 
of his countrymen is deserving of greater condemnation than his 
ignorance ; or else he has uttered a falsehood as gross as it is 
mean. The truth is, Bonaparte thought posterity could be cheat- 
ed as easily as his cotemporaries. In the dazzling noon-day of 
his fame, he could make a flattering press say what he liked, and 
the world would believe it; but the tumult and false splendour of 
his life have passed away, and men begin to scrutinize this demi- 
god a little more closely ; and we find that his word cannot be 
relied on in the least, when speaking of the character and deeds 
of others. He is willing to have no planet cross his orbit, and 
will allow no glory except as it is reflected from him. But not- 
withstanding his efforts to detract from the merit of this act of 
Macdonald, posterity will put it in its true light, and every intelli- 
gent reader of the accounts of the two passages of the St. Ber- 
nard and the Splugen, will perceive at a glance that Bonaparte's 
achievement is mere child's play beside that of Macdonald. 



7fl MOUNT RIGHI. 



XIII. 
THE RIGHI CULM. 



From the top of the Righi is seen one of the most celebrated 
views in all Switzerland. The magnificent prospect it commands 
is not owing so much to its height (it being only 5700 feet above 
the level of the sea) as to its isolated position. It rises like a 
cone up from Lakes Lucerne and Zug, with a forest round its 
waist, and a lofty precipice for its forehead sloping away into 
green pasturages. 

I went by way of Kussnacbt, in order to visit the spot where 
William Tell leaped ashore from the boat that was conveying 
him a prisoner to that place, and sent an arrow through the heart 
of Gessler. By this route it takes seven hours to reach the Culm 
of the Righi from Lucerne. I had started with many misgivings, 
and with depressed feelings. The companions of my travels had 
had enough of mountain climbing and of Switzerland, and here 
resolved to start for England. It requires no common resolution 
to break away from all one's companions in a strange land, and 
turn one's footsteps alone towards the Alps. But the Righi I was 
determined to see, and the surpassing prospect from its summit, 
even though I waited a week to enjoy it. 

But all this was forgotten for a while as I entered the Hohle- 
gasse or narrow way where Tell lay concealed, waiting the ty- 
rant's approach. I could imagine the very look of this bold free 
Swiss, as concealed among the trees he drew the silent arrow to 
its head, and sent it on its mission of death. The shout of a free 
people was in the twang of that bow, and the hand of Liberty 
herself sent the bolt home ; while in that manly form that went 
leaping like a chamois over the hills, was the hope of Switzer- 



WILLIAM TELL. 71 



land. From this hallowed spot I began the toilsome ascent of the 
Righi with no companion but my guide. It was a bright summer 
afternoon, and stripping off my coat and handing it with my cloak 
to my guide, I nerved myself for my four hours of constant 
climbing. When about halfway up, 1 sat down and looked back 
on the scene. There was Lucerne, from which my companions 
were just about starting for England and for home. Away from 
it into the very bosom of the mountains went the sweet Lake of 
Lucerne. Close at my feet, apparently, nestled the little chapel 
of Tell, built on the spot where the patriot slew the tyrant; while 
far away swept the land of the Swiss. As an American, I could 
not view the land of Tell and Winkelried, and look down on the 
shores where the " oath of the Grutli" was taken, and Switzer- 
land made her first stand for freedom, without the deepest emo- 
tion. There slept the sweet Lake of Lucerne calm and tranquil 
as the heavens above it. But there was a night when its waters 
were lashed into fury by an Alpine storm, and close beside those 
old rocks struggled a frail vessel hopelessly with the tempest. 
The lightning, as it rent the gloom, showed ever and anon its 
half-buried form amid the waves. The torn sail was shivering 
in the blast, while the roar of the billows on the rocks fell dis- 
tinctly on the ears of the appalled listeners, as they looked to 
each other for help in vain. A tyrant stood trembling on its 
foam-covered deck, and asked if there was no help. A stern 
proud prisoner was brought before him, and looked calmly out 
upon the frightful deep. " Unbind him," said the tyrant — " he 
alone can save us." The chains were knocked off; and with the 
same calm, silent mien, he seized the helm and guided the leap- 
ing vessel safely amid the rocks. The boat is ashore, but where 
is the prisoner? Fled? aye, fled! but not for safety alone. 
The night covers him, and the tyrant has entered the narrow 
gorge on his way to his home. A sharp twang as of a bow- 
string, — a quick, hissing sound through the air, and Gessler falls 
back in the arms of his attendants, with an arrow in his bosom. 
" Das war TelVs Schoss /" exclaimed the tyrant and died. Then 
rang the battle cry of Freedom along these shores, and from her 
hundred mountain vallies came pouring down the hardy Swiss. 
With the sword of Tell to wave them on, they bravely battled 



72 ASCENT OF THE MOUNTAIN. 

their way to freedom. Blessings on thee, bold Swiss ! thy name 
is a watchword for freemen and ever shall be. Around it cluster 
the fondest memories of the patriot, and children love to speak it 
aloud. But ah, how degenerate has the race become ! Cor- 
rupted and debased by the French, their freedom and their hon- 
esty have departed together. 

I turned to ascend the mountain again. Crossing a narrow 
level pasturage, I was greeted with the tinkling of bells, and the 
clear voices of shepherd boys singing in a shrill falsetto their wild 
Alpine chorusses. As I drew near the top, I passed a boy lean- 
ing against a rock, and making the air ring with -the tones of his 
Alpine horn. A few moments after a cloud of mist swept over 
the mountain, burying every thing in twilight gloom and chilling 
my blood like the sudden entrance to a damp vault. The sun, 
which a moment before shone over me in unclouded brightness, 
was snatched from my sight, and 1 stumbled on in a cloud to the 
house on the top. The wind swept by in gusts, making the mist 
dive and plunge and leap through the air like mad spirits. Now 
it would rise towards me as I looked over the precipice, like the 
smoke from some vast furnace, and then plunge again into the 
gulfs below, while the fragments writhed and twisted together as 
if tortured into agony by some invisible agency. I had scarcely 
entered the house before a cold chill seized me that seemed im- 
possible to shake off, and which the good woman of the house had 
the kindness to tell me, unless I did, would end in a fever in the 
morning. I should have brought some dry clothing with me, but 
forgot it. Fire and water, brandy and wine, were tried in suc- 
cession, but still I kept shaking. As a last resort I cleared the 
largest room in the house, and then wrapping my heavy cloak 
around me, began to leap and run and throw myself into the most 
difficult postures, to the no small wonderment of the quiet Swiss. 
But in half an hour I had the satisfaction of feeling the blood flow 
warmer and hotter through my veins, while the perspiration stood 
in drops on my forehead. I had conquered, and after resting a 
while, went out to the verge of the cliff which shoots its naked 
wall two hundred feet clear down to Lake Zug, and endeavoured 
to pierce the cloud that had changed day into night. I knew it 
was not yet sundown, and hoped I might see its last rays falling 



VIEW AT EVENING 73 

over the magnificent panorama which I knew was spread out be- 
low me. It was all in vain: that cloud closed round the summit 
like a gloomy fate, and shut all out of sight. But suddenly, as I 
was gazing, a lake of fire, miles away, burst on the view; one 
half red as flame, and the other half midnight blackness, streaked 
with a murky red. The next moment it shut again, and in an- 
other direction another fiery surface flashed up into the awful 
blackness, reminding me more than anything I ever saw, of what a 
distant view of perdition might be. This strange spectacle was 
caused by the cloud opening before me and revealing a portion 
of a distant lake, while the mist was still dense enough to refract 
the rays of the sun, giving that dark smoky red you sometimes 
see on the edge of a thunder-cloud, as it rolls up at sunset after a 
scorching day. I sat up till late at night reading Schiller's Wil- 
liam Tell, and then retired giving directions to be waked up early 
in the morning to see the sun rise. I had many misgivings, I 
confess, about the morning, and the verse composed once by an 
Englishman who made the ascent, and which were the last words 
uttered by my companions as I bade them good bye, were con- 
stantly running in my head. 

Seven weary up-hill leagues we sped 

The setting sun to see : 
Sullen and grim he went to bed ; 

Sullen and grim went we. 
Nine sleepless hours of night we passed 

The rising sun to see : 
Sullen and grim he rose again ; 

Sullen and grim rose we. 

I passed the hours sleepless enough, and when I rose to look 
out in the morning, an impenetrable mist seemed to wrap every 
thing. I was just crawling back to bed again when I thought I 
would take another look. Passing my hand over the glass, I 
found what I had taken for mist was simply the vapour condensed 
on the window. A clear blue sky was bending overhead. 

In a few moments I was standing on the brow of the precipice 
and watching with intense interest the scene around me. On my 
right, stood cold and silent, white and grand, the whole range of 
the Bernese Alps. Close under me, hundreds of feet down, lay 



74 VIEW AT SUNRISE. 

the waters of the Zug, and yet so close to the mountain on which 
I stood, that it seemed as if I could kick a stone into it. On the 
left spread away the glorious Swiss land, sprinkled over with vil- 
lages and lakes. Behind me was the Lucerne throwing its arms 
away into the heart of the mountains, while forests, rivers, towns, 
hills and lakes, formed together a panorama three hundred miles 
in circumference. While I stood gazing, awe-struck, on the 
silent majestic scene as it lay motionless in the gray light of 
morning, a golden streak spread along the East. Brighter and 
brighter it grew till the snow-peak nearest it caught the same 
fiery glow, and stood tipped with flame over the -world of snow 
below. Suddenly another peak flashed up beside it, and then 
another and another, till fo/ nearly a hundred miles, from the 
Sentis to the Jungfrau, the whole range of giant summits, stood, 
a deep rose colour against a blue sky, while vast snow-fields 
and glaciers slept in deep shadow between. I stood bewildered 
and amazed, gazing on that hundred miles of rose-coloured 
mountains. It seemed for the time as if the Deity had thrown 
the robe of his glory .over those gigantic forms on purpose to see 
how they became their gorgeous apparelling. Gradually they 
paled away as the blazing fiery ball rolled into view and poured 
a flood of light on the whole scene, waking the landscape into 
sudden life and beauty. It is impossible to describe such a 
scene. The whole, range of the Bernese Alps before you, with 
its peaks, and glaciers, and precipices, and snow-fields, and 
gorges, is a scene in itself which has no parallel in the world, 
while the sudden change from ghostly white to a transparent red, 
fading gradually away into a delicate rose-colour, renders the 
spectator unable to seize any one thing which would give spe- 
ciality to the whole. I have never felt the utter powerlessness 
of words and feebleness of all comparisons, as in attempting to 
describe such a scene as spreads away on the vision from Mount 
Righi at sunrise. 

But cast your eye round the horizon now the full light of day 
is on it. To the west the country opens like a map, with the 
whole canton of Lucerne in view, while far away, a mere pool, 
glitters the Lake of Sempach, whose shores are one of Switzer- 
land's glorious battle , fields. The eye passes on over Lucerne 



AFTER SUNRISE. 75 



and the gloomy Pilatus, and finally leaves the western horizon on 
the Jura mountains. On the south spring up into heaven the 
whole glorious chain of the high Alps of Berne, Unterwalden and 
Uri in one unbroken ridge of peaks and glaciers. On the east 
still stretches away the Alpine chain, folding in the cantons of 
Glarus and Appenzel, and the Muotta Thai, that wild valley 
where Suwarrow and Massena fought their bloody battles on ground 
that even the chamois hunter scarce dared to tread. Nearer 
by rises the mass of the Rossberg, with the black chasm made 
by its terrible avalanche of earth, as it rolled down on Goldau, 
plainly in view. To the north peeps out Lake Zurich, with here 
and there a white roof of the town ; and the spire of the chapel 
where Zwingli fell in battle. The towns of Arth and Zug are 
also visible, and a bare hand's breadth of Lake Egeri, on whose 
shores the Swiss fought and gained the battle of Mortgarten. 
The Black Forest hills shut in the view. It is a glorious pano- 
rama, changing from grand to beautiful and back again, till the 
heart staggers under the emotions that crowd it, asking in vain 
for utterance. But the' eye will turn again and again to that 
wondrous chain of white peaks, resting so clear and pure and 
cold against the morning sky, and the lips will murmur — 



" The hills, the everlasting hills, 
How peerlessly they rise, 
Like earth's gigantic sentinels 
Discoursing in the skies." 



76 MOUNT ROSSBERG 



XIV. 

GOLMU-FALL OF THE ROSSBERG. 



As I descended the Righi towards Goldau I had a clear and 
distinct view of the whole side of the Rossberg. This mountain, 
so renowned in history, is about 5,000 feet high, with an unbroken 
slope reaching down to Goldau. The top of the mountain is com- 
posed of pudding stone, called by the Germans Nagelflue, or nail 
head, from the knobs on the surface. The whole, strata of this 
mountain are tilted from Lake Zug towards Goldau, and slope, 
like the roof of a house, down to the village. The frightful land 
slide, which buried the village and inhabitants of Goldau, was 
about three miles long, a thousand feet broad, and a hundred feet 
thick. The fissure runs up and down the mountain, and the mass 
slid away from its bed, till acquiring momentum and velocity, it 
broke into fragments, and rolled and thundered down the moun- 
tain, burying the village a hundred feet deep. The afternoon of 
the catastrophe, the Rossberg gave ominous signs of some ap- 
proaching convulsion. Rocks started spontaneously from its bo- 
som, and thundered down its sides; the springs of water suddenly 
ceased to flow ; birds flew screaming through the air ; the pine 
trees of the forest rocked and swayed without any blast, and the 
whole surface of the mountain seemed gradually sliding towards 
the plain. A party of eleven travellers from Berne was on its 
way to the Righi at the time. Seven of them happened to be 
ahead, and the other four saw them enter the village of Goldau 
just as they observed a strange commotion on the summit of the 
Rossberg. As they raised their glass to notice this more definitely, 
a shower of stones shot off from the top and whirled like cannon 
balls through the air above their heads. The next moment a 



OVERTHROW OF GOLDAU. . 77 

cloud of dust filled the valley, while from its bosom came a wild 
uproar, as if nature was breaking up from her deep foundations. 
The Rossberg was on the march for Goldau with the strength and 
terror of an earthquake. The cloud cleared away and nothing 
but a wild waste of rocks and earth-was above where the smiling 
villages of Goldau, Bussingen and Rothen stood before. One 
hundred and eleven houses, and more than two hundred stables 
and chalets had disappeared ; carrying down with them in their 
dark burial nearly five hundred human beings. The Lake of 
Lowertz was half filled with mud, while the immense rocks trav- 
ersed the valley its entire width, and were hurled far up the 
Righi, mowing down the trees like cannon shot. The inhabitants 
of the neighbouring villages heard the grinding crushing sound, as 
of mountains falling together, and beheld the cloud of dust that 
darkened the air. Five minutes after, and all was hushed, and 
the quiet rain came down as before, and as it had done during the 
day, but no longer on'human dwellings. It fell on the grave of 
nearly 500 men, women and children, crushed and mangled, and 
pressed uncoffined into their mother earth. Nothing was left of 
the villages and pasturages that stood in the valley but the bell 
of the church of Goldau, which was carried a mile and a half 
from the steeple in which it hung. When the Lake of Lowertz, 
five miles off, received the torrent of earth into its bosom, it threw 
a wave seventy feet high clear over the island of Schwanau, and 
rolled up on the opposite shore, bringing back, in its reflux, houses 
with their inhabitants. The friends whom their fellow travellers 
had seen enter.the village of Goldau just as the mountain started 
on its march, were never seen more. 

It was a beautiful day, as I sat and looked over this chaos of 
rocks and earth. The Lake of Lowertz slept quietly under the 
summer sun. and the bell of Goldau was ringing out its merry 
peal in the very face of the Rossberg, that seemed to look down 
with a stern and savage aspect on the ruin at his feet. The deep 
gash in his forehead and his riven side still remain as fresh as if 
made but yesterday. I wandered over the ground all ridged and 
broken, just as it was at the close of that terrible day, with feel- 
ings of the profoundest melancholy. A few scattered houses had 
been built on the debris of rocks and stone, and here and there 



78 TRADITION OF LAKE LOWERTZ. 

was a mockery of a garden, which the unconscious husbandman 
was endeavouring to till above the bones of his father. A gloom 
rests on all the valley, and Rossberg seems sole monarch here. 

" Mountains have fallen 



Leaving a gap in the clouds, and with the shock 
Rocking their Alpine brethren, filling up 
The ripe green vallies with destruction's splinters, 
Damming the rivers with a sudden dash, 
Which crushed the waters into mist, and made 
Their fountains find another channel : thus — 
Thus, in its old age, did Mount Rossberg." 

On the island of Schwanau, in Lake Lowertz, is the ruin of a 
castle destroyed by the Swiss to revenge the violence done by its 
owner to a young woman. There is a tradition attached to it 
wild enough to form the ground-work of half a dozen novels. It 
is said that once a year shrieks are heard to ring from it, and 
immediately after, the ghost of the old villain shoots by, pressed 
hard after by the spirit of the pale, wronged girl, bearing a torch 
in her hand, and screaming terrifically on his flying traces. For 
a while he escapes his frail pursuer, but at length she forces him 
into the lake, where he sinks with hideous groans. A wild chaos 
of tones and fearful yells rings up from the shore as the waves 
close over him, and the scene is ended. The good people need 
not be so anxious to insure the doom of the old wretch. The 
spirit of that pale girl is avenged without all this trouble, and the 
waves that close over him are more terrible than the waters of 
Lowertz. 

I walked from Goldau to Arth all alone, and amused myself 
with watching the groups of peasantry that constantly passed me 
with curious looks. . It was some fete day, and they were all clad 
in their holiday dresses, and went smiling on, as cheerful as the 
bright day about them. They would accost me in the most plea- 
sant manner, and I was constantly greeted with " guten morgen" 
or " gut Tag," that made me feel as if I were among friends. 
As I entered the hotel at Arth, the first thing that met my eye 
was my trunk. Its familiar look was as welcome as the face of 
a friend; and, childish as it may seem, I felt less solitary than 
when sad and alone I entered the quiet inn. 



ZWINGLI. 79 



There is an excellent arrangement in Switzerland, by which 
one can mail his baggage as he can a letter, to any town on the 
mail route in the whole country. The traveller enters his differ- 
ent articles, takes his ticket, and then starts off into the Alps, 
and is gone for two months without the least concern. My cork 
sole boots, with which I had climbed every pass, gave out at Gol- 
Jau. but by dint of strings, etc., I made them do till I reached 
Arth, where I was compelled to abandon the trustiest companions 
of all my travels ; and left them standing in the inn, with their 
tops leaning over one side, in the most dolorous, reproachful man- 
ner imaginable. It is curious how one becomes attached to every 
thing he carries about him in the Alps. I have known the most 
unsentimental men carry tkeir Alpine stock across the Atlantic 
with them. 

The ride through the canton of Zug to Zurich was one of the 
pleasantest I took in Switzerland, and I verily believe this is one 
of the most beautiful cantons in it. There was a neatness in the 
dwellings and costumes of the inhabitants I had not noticed before. 
I passed by the spot where Zwingli the Reformer fell, in the 
midst of his flock, transfixed by a sword ; and by the monument 
erected to commemorate the place where Henry Von Hunenberg 
shot an arrow from the Austrian lines into the Swiss camp bearing 
the sentence " Beware of Mortgarten." The Swiss took the 
advice, and won the battle, and their descendants have reared 
this memento of the bold young patriot. Before entering Zurich, 
as we came in sight of the lake almost its entire length, I had 
one of the finest lake views I ever beheld. The beautiful shores 
sprinkled with white dwellings ; the town itself, and its gardens, 
and the distant mountains, combined to render it a perfect picture. 
Zurich is a pleasant town, and reminded me more of home than 
any place on the continent. Its white dwellings surrounded with 
gardens and grounds, carried me back in a moment to New Eng- 
land. I spent the Sabbath here, and was surprised to find in ihis 
borne of Zwingli — this Protestant canton — so little respect paid 
to its sanctity. Towards evening the military were reviewed 
on the public square, while on one side was a public exhibition of 
rope-dancers and tumblers, and among the tumblers two rosy- 
cheeked peasant girls. This is a Protestant canton indeed* 



80 SABBATH IN ZURICH. 

Protestant it may be, but this was no Protestant Sabbath. Yet, 
externally, Zurich is one of the pleasantest towns in Switzerland. 
The views around it are beautiful, while the rural aspect of the 
whole gives it a charm few Swiss villages possess. I love the 
land of the bold Swiss ; I love its lakes and snow-peaks and 
smiling vallies ; but alas for its inhabitants. Their glory is in 
the past, and their stern integrity too. It seems impossible that 
any people should long retain simplicity and purity of character 
in the heart of Europe. The influence of the corrupt nations is 
too great, especially when the contact is so frequent as now. 



FORMATION OF AVALANCHES. 81 



XY. 



AVALANCHES AND GLACIERS, THEIR FORMA- 
TION AND MOVEMENT. 



Before taking leave of Switzerland, it may be interesting to 
give some statistics of the Alps, though they are always after- 
thoughts with the traveller. I have hitherto endeavoured to give 
the effect of the scenery one meets in the Alps rather than detailed 
descriptions of it. 

Avalanches are regarded by many as immense masses of snow 
of a somewhat globular form, which gather as they roll till they 
acquire the size of a miniature mountain, and are more terrible 
to see even, than to hear. This is true of many of those which 
fall in winter, but not of those which descend in spring and early 
summer. The Swiss have different names for different kinds of 
avalanches. There is the Staublawinen, or dust avalanche, and 
Grundlawinen, or ground avalanche. The former is the falling 
of loose fresh-fallen snow. Gathering into huge drifts upon some 
peak till it is detached by its own weight; it slides away until it 
reaches a precipice, when it commences rolling and thundering 
down the mountain. Increasing in bulk with every bound, and ex- 
tending farther and wider, it acquires at length an impetus and 
strength that sweep down whole forests, in its passage, as if the 
trees were slender reeds ; and moves across the entire valley, into 
which it lands. This, however, is not the most dangerous kind of 
avalanche, as it only buries people and cattle, and does not crush 
them ; so that they can frequently be dug out again without serious 
injury. The Grundlawinen, on the other hand, is a more serious 
matter. It falls in the springtime, and is dislodged by the action 
of sun, south winds, and rain. These thawing the upper surface, 



82 DESCENT OF AVALANCHES. 

the water trickles down through the crevices, increasing their 
width and depth, till huge blocks, indeed immense precipices, are 
sawn loose by this slow process ; and tipping over or sliding away, 
come with the might of fate itself down the precipitous sides of 
the mountain. A village disappears in their path in a breath — trees 
three feet in diameter are snapped off like pipe stems, and nothing 
but a wild ruinous waste is left where they sweep in their wrath. As 
1 mentioned before, these avalanches have paths they travel regu- 
larly as deer. This is indicated by the shape of the mountains, 
and if the path comes straight on the site of a village, the inhabi- 
tants build strong parapets of mason work, against which the ava- 
lanches may thunder and accumulate. These prove sometimes, 
however, too weak for the falling mass, and are borne away in their 
headlong sweep, adding still greater ruin and terror to their march. 
The village I saw crushed in the pass of the Tete Noire had such 
a wall built behind its church to protect it. For a long time it 
withstood the shock of the avalanches that fell against it, but one 
night there came one too strong to be resisted, and bore away par- 
apet, church, hamlet and all. The wind caused by an avalanche 
in its passage is sometimes terrific. A blast is generated by the 
rapid motion of the headlong mass, like that created by a cannon 
ball in its descent, which extends to some distance both sides of it, 
and bears down trees and whirls them like feathers through 
the atmosphere. A church spire was once blown down by one 
that fell a quarter of a mile off. These masses of ice and snow 
sometimes fill up immense gorges, and are bored through by the 
torrent, forming a natural bridge, over which the peasants drive 
their cattle the entire summer. The Swiss have their " sacred 
groves," which are the forests that are left standing on a moun- 
tain side above a hamlet to protect it from avalanches. 

Those which fall in early summer are attended with very little 
danger, as they usually descend in abysses where no traveller 
ever goes. They are seen at a distance, and hence have none 
of the appearance commonly supposed to belong to an avalanche. 
You hear first a rumbling sound, which soon swells to a full, 
though distant thunder tone ; and in turning your eye towards the 
spot whence the sound proceeds, you see something which appears 
like a small white rivulet pouring down the mountain side, now 



FORMATION OF GLACIEHS. 83 

disappearing in some ravine, and now reappearing on the edge 
of some cliff over which it runs, and falls with headlong speed 
and increased roar, till it finally lands in a deep abyss. You 
wonder at first how so small a movement can create so deep and 
startling a sound; but in that apparently small rivulet are rolling 
whole precipices of ice, with a rapidity and power that nothing 
could resist. Yet these terrible visitants become as familiar to 
the Swiss as our own rain-storms to us. The peasantry wait their 
regular descent in the spring as indications that winter is over. 
Those which are loosened by the human voice or the jingling of 
bells are so nicely balanced at the time, that it requires but the 
slightest change or shock in the atmosphere to destroy their 
equilibrium. 

Glaciers are the everlasting drapery of the Alps, clothing 
them in summer and winter with their robes of ice. They are 
formed by the successive thawing and freezing of the loose snow 
in spring and summer. Melting in the daytime and freezing at 
night, the whole mass at length becomes crystalized ; — and as the 
lower extremities melt in summer, they gradually move down the 
mountain, carrying with them debris of rocks and stone, making 
a perfect geological cabinet of the hill it throws up. 

Glaciers begin at an elevation of about 8000 feet or a little 
less — above this are eternal snow fields. These srletschers or 
glaciers constitute one of the most striking features of Alpine 
scenery. Whether looked upon with the eye of a geologist, and 
,the slow and mighty process of renovation and destruction, con- 
templated, working on from the birth to the death of Time ; or 
whether regarded with the eye of a landscape painter, as they 
now clasp the breast of a bold peak in their shining embrace, and 
now stretch their icy arms far away into the mountains, and 
now plunge their glittering foreheads into the green valley — 
they are the same objects of intense interest, and ever fresh 
wonder. 

As they push down the declivities, the obstructions they meet 
with, and the broken surface over which they pass, throw them 
into every variety of shape. Towers are suddenly squeezed up 
forty or fifty feet high, and precipices thrown out which topple over 
with the roar of thunder. Rocks or boulders that have been car- 



84 CREVICES. 



ried away from their resting-places on the bosom of a glacier, 
protect the ice under them by their shadow, while the surrounding 
mass gradually melts away, leaving them standing on stately 
pedestals, huge block obelisks slowly travelling towards the val- 
ley. Whenever these descending masses enter a gorge in the 
mountains, they spread out into it, partially filling it up, and are 
called ice seas. The Mer de Glace of Chamounv is one of these. 
These large collections of ice are traversed by immense crevices, 
reaching hundreds of feet down, and revealing that beautiful 
ultra-marine colour which the Rhone has as it leaves Lake Gene- 
va. Through these fissures, streams flow in every direction, and 
collecting at the lower extremity of the glacier, under the roof of 
a huge cavern of their own making, flow off, a turbid torrent, into 
the valley. Into these crevices the snow frequently drifts, cho- 
king up the portion near the surface, thus making concealed pit- 
falls for the traveller, and sometimes even for the wary, bold 
chamois hunter. Above the glaciers, near the summit, one fre- 
quently meets with red snow. 1 have seen it myself, and noticed 
it when I was -not looking for it. The colour is said to be pro- 
duced by a species of fungus called " Palmella Nivalis or Proto- 
cocus," which makes the snow itself its soil, and germinates and 
grows in imperceptible branches over the surface. The invisible 
threads reaching out in every direction give to the snow a deep 
crimson blush, which, as the plant dies, changes into a dirty 
black. The number of glaciers in the Alps has been put by Ebel 
at four hundred, covering a surface of about three hundred and 
fifty square miles. But he might as well attempt to estimate the 
number and weight of all the avalanches that fall; for these gla- 
ciers are of all sizes, from a few rods to miles, and in every 
variety of shape and position. The one around the Finster- 
Aar-horn contains a hundred and twenty square miles. The 
traveller sees, as at Grindelwald and Chamouni, only the 
branches, the mere arms of these mighty forms. Scientific men 
differ very much as to the relative thickness of glaciers, though 
they average probably not more than seventy or eighty feet. 
The Mer de Glace, where it pitches into the vale of Chamouni, is 
a hundred and eighty feet thick. Some of these glaciers are of a 
Dure white, and shine in the noonday sun with dazzling splendour, 



SOUNDS IN THE ALPS. 85 

but the greater part of them are covered with the debris of the 
mountains, giving them a dirty hue, wholly unlike the appearance 
one imagines they present, who has never seen them. The im- 
pression they make on the mind of the beholder, however, can 
never be effaced. The marks of power, of terrific struggles they 
carry about them, fill the mind with emotions of grandeur almost 
equal to the solitary avalanche and its lonely voice of thunder. 
They have a voice of- their own, too, called by the mountaineers 
brulleti (growlings), caused by the rending of the solid mass when 
the south-east wind breathes upon it. The lower portion of the 
Alps is full of sound and motion : even afteryou leave the tinkling 
of bells, the music of the horn and the blea ing of goats, there is 
the roar of the torrent, the shock of the avalanche, and the grind- 
ing, crushing sound of the mighty glacier. But when you ascend 
above these, all is still and silent as the sepulchre. Eternal sab- 
bath reigns around the peaks, and solitude deeper than the heart 
of the forest, embraces the subdued and humbled adventurer; 
while the sudden flight of a pheasant from amid the snow, or the 
slow and lordly sweep of the Lamergeyer, in his circles upward, 
startle the feelings into greater intensity. 

16 



86 AN ALPINE EMIGRANT. 



XVI. 

PASTURAGES, CHALETS, AND ALPINE PASSES. 



In passing through the higher Alps nothing has afforded me 
more pleasure than the green pasturages which, here and there, 
dot the savage landscape. Sometimes they have burst unexpect- 
edly on me, as the fierce Alpine storm-cloud rent above them, re- 
vealing for a moment a face of gentleness and beauty, and then 
veiling it again in impenetrable gloom ; and now greeting me 
from the precipitous side of some difficult pass ; yet always awa- 
kening the same emotions. The bold features of Alpine scenery 
and the strong contrasts presented by the quiet meadow spot 
and the cold white glaciers that lay their icy hands on its green 
bosom — the secure little hamlet, surrounded by the most savage and 
awful forms of nature — must make an ineffaceable impression on 
the heart of a Swiss mountaineer, and prevent, I should think, his 
ever being an emigrant. I am inclined to believe very few in 
proportion to the whole population ever do leave the region of the 
Alps. I remember finding a returned emigrant on the summit 
of the Righi. He had trinkets of various kinds to sell, made of 
wood and chamois horn, &c. I do not know how it happened, but 
I accidentally learned that he had once been to America, and was 
curious to learn what had brought him back. He liked the new 
country, he said, very well, but he liked the Alps better. "Oh," 
said he, " you have no Alps in America !" He could not forget 
the mountains and glaciers and pasturage of his native land, and 
I could not blame him. And yet the poetry of a Swiss mountain- 
eer's life is all in appearance and none in reality. So with the 
chalets and pasturages; — they are picturesque things in the land- 



DESCRIPTION OF THE CHALET. 87 

scape, and there their beauty ends. The life of a Swiss herds- 
man is any thing but one of sentiment. The sound of his horn 
at sunrise, ringing through the sweet valley as he drives his flocks 
to pasture ; and the song of the " Ranz des vetches" as the herds 
slowly wind along the mountain paths, are delightful to the ear. 
So is the tinkling of countless bells at evening, one of the pleasant- 
est sounds that was wont to greet me in my wanderings in the 
Alps. But the herdsman thinks of none of these things. To 
gather together nearly a hundred cows twice a day, and milk 
them, and make the butter and cheese, and do all the outdoor 
work belonging to such a dairy, make his life one of constant toil. 
The chalet too, which is simply a Western log hut, built in exact- 
ly the same style, and loaded down with stone on the roof to keep 
it from being blown away by the Alpine blast, — though adding 
much to the scenery, is any thing but a comfortable home. A 
table and bench constitute the furniture — some loose straw above, 
the bed, while through the crevices on every side the wind and 
rain enter at their 1-eisure. To complete the discomfort, the cattle 
are allowed to tread the ground around it into a barnyard. There 
are exceptions to this rule, but this is the common chalet which 
meets one at every turn on a Swiss pasturage. They are built 
with no reference to each other, but are scattered around on the 
slopes as if sieved down from above, and alighted where they did 
by the merest chance. The number that will be scattered around 
in a single valley is almost incredible. As I descended into Grin- 
glelwald the thick sprinkling of these little low dark-looking cha- 
lets over the distant slopes produced a most singular effect. Their 
number seemed literally legion. There are ten thousand in the 
Simmenthal alone. 

In Switzerland, Alps signifies mountain pasturage, and is used 
in that sense. These Alps, or mountain pasturages, are some- 
times private property, and sometimes the property of the village 
or commune. When owned by the latter, every inhabitant is al- 
lowed to pasture a certain number of cattle for so many days upon 
it. I saw, near Grindelwald, one of these government pasturages, 
and it was literally covered with cows. The valley furnishes the 
first pasture in the spring, and as the summer advances, and the 
higher pasturages become free of snow, the herds are driven up to 



88 MODE OF PASTURING CATTLE. 

them. Owners of a large number of cattle will have a chalet on 
every pasturage for their cowherd. 

In speaking of the customs of the Swiss in this respect, Latrobe 
says : " They stay on the first pasturages till about the 10th or 
12th of June, when the cattle are driven to the middle range of 
pasturages. That portion of the herd intended for a summer 
campaign on the highest Alps remain here till the beginning of 
July, and, on the fourth of that month, generally ascend to them ; 
return to the middle range of pastures about seven or eight weeks 
afterwards, spend there about fourteen days, or three weeks, to 
eat the after grass ; and finally return into the valleys about the 
10th or 11th of October, where they remain, in the vicinity of the 
villages, till driven by the snow and tempests of winter into the 
stables. 

" That portion of the cattle, on the other hand, which is not 
destined to pass the summer on the higher Alps, and are necessary 
for the supply of the village with milk and butter, descend from 
the middle pastures, on the fourth of July, into the valley, and 
consume the grass upon the pasturage belonging to the commune, 
till the winter drives them under shelter. The very highest Al- 
pine pasturages are never occupied more than three or four 
weeks." . 

I have already, in another place, spoken of the custom of dri- 
ving herds to the most inaccessible pasturages in midsummer. 
Herds are thus driven across the Mer de Glace, in July, to the 
pasturages beyond, though more or less cattle are lost in the 
crevices of the glaciers at every passage. 

Murray says that the best cheese is made " upon pastures 3000 
feet above the level of the sea, in the vales of Simmen, and Saa- 
nen, and Emmenthal. The best cows there yield, in summer, 
between twenty and forty pounds of milk daily, and each cow 
produces, by the end of the season of four months, on an average, 
two hundred weight of cheese." I have seen herds feeding six 
and seven thousand feet above the level of the sea. 

I ought to add, perhaps, in justice to the Swiss, that some 
of the chalets, are exceptions to those I described as being 
both uncomfortable and. dirty, and are neat and tidy as a New 
England farm-house. The white table-cloth and clean though 



NUMBER OF ALPINE PASSES. 89 

rude furniture, and fresh butter and milk, and pleasant face of 
the hospitable mistress, make the traveller's heart leap within him, 
as, weary and cold, he crosses the threshold. 

I have spoken of several of the Alpine passes in detail, and re- 
fer to them now merely to state that there are fifty in Switzerland 
alone. Those roads constructed for carriages are not allowed to 
rise more than a certain number of feet to a mile. Distance 
seems not to have entered into the calculations of the engineers 
who built those monuments of human skill — carriage roads over 
the Alps. They were after a certain grade, and they obtained it, 
though by contortions and serpentine windings that seem almost 
endless. Thus the Simplon averages nowhere more than one 
inch elevation to a foot, and, indeed; not quite that. Thirty thou- 
sand men were employed on this road six years. There are 611 
bridges in less than forty miles, ten galleries, and twenty houses 
of refuge, while the average width of the road is over twenty -five 
feet. The cost of the whole was about 81,200,000. The Splu- 
gen presents almost as striking features as the Simplon. From 
these facts some idea may be gathered of the stupendous work it 
must be to carry a carriage road over the Alps. 

In the winter they are all blocked up, and none but the bold 
foot traveller ventures on their track. The driving snow-storms 
and falling avalanches render them impassable to carriages, and 
perilous even to the accustomed mountaineer. I believe that the 
mail is carried over the Simplon, during the winter, by a man 
either on foot or with a mule. I think I have been told that he 
makes the passage twice a week, bringing to the hospice on the 
top the only news that reach it of the world below. For eight 
months in the year the inhabitants of the higher Alps might as 
well be out of the world, f.}r all knowledge they have of its doings 
and ways. 



90 LAST VIEW OF THE ALPS. 



XVII. 
A FAREWELL TO SWITZERLAND-BASLE. 



The first view one gets of the Rhine in leaving Switzerland 
from the east is on his way from Zurich to Basle. Here, also, 
he takes his farewell look of the Alps. From the top of the 
Botzberg the whole range of the Bernese Alps rises on the view. 
Amid the scenes in which he has moved since he left their pres- 
ence, the traveller almost forgot their existence, and as they here 
rise again on his vision, they bring back a world of associations 
to his heart. There they stand leaning against the distant sky, 
like the forms . of friends he has left forever. Such were my feel- 
ings as I sat down by the road-side, under as bright a sky as ever 
bent over the vineyards of Italy, and looked off upon those bold 
peaks which had become to me objects of affection. A few days 
only had elasped since I was amid their terror and their beauty. 
I had seen the moonbeams glancing on their glaciers at midnight, 
and heard the music of their torrents lifting up their voices from 
the awful abysses. I had seen the avalanche bound from their 
precipices, and rush, smoking and thundering, into the gulfs below 
— and been wrapt in their storms and clouds. I had toiled and 
struggled through their snow drifts, and stood enraptured on their 
green pasturages, while the music of bells, the bleating of flocks, 
and the clear tones of the Alp-horn made it seem like a dream- 
land to me. A mere dwarf in comparison, I had moved and 
mused amid those terrific forms. Now mellowed and subdued by 
distance, the vast, white, irregular mass, lay like a monster dream- 
ing in the blue mist. Clouds resting below the summit, slept here 
and there along the range, and all was silent and beautiful. I 
love nature always, .but especially in these her grander and no- 



A LEGEND. 91 



bier aspects. The Alps had lain along the horizon of my imag- 
ination from childhood up. The desire of years had at length 
been fulfilled, and I had wandered amid the avalanches and gla- 
ciers and snow-fields and cottages of the Oberland, and now I was 
taking my last look. It was with feelings of profound melancholy 
I turned away from St. Peters and the Duomo of Milan, feeling 
I should see their magnificent proportions no more. But it was 
with still sadder feelings I gazed my farewell on the glorious 
Alps. 

On this route, within half a mile of Brugg, is a lunatic asylum, 
once the Abbey of Koenigsfelden, (King's field,) which the guide 
book informs you was founded in 1310, by Empress Elizabeth, 
and Agnes, Queen of Hungary, on. the spot where the Emperor 
Albert, the husband of the former and father of the latter, was as- 
sassinated. Leaving his suite on the opposite bank, he had cross- 
ed the river Reuss at this point, with only the four conspirators 
accompanying him. The principal one, John of Swabia, was 
the nephew of Albert, and was incited to this deed from being 
kept out of his paternal inheritance by his uncle. He struck 
first, and sent his lance through the Emperor's throat. Bolm then 
pierced him through and through with his sword, while Walter 
von Eschenbach cleaved his skull in twain with a felling stroke. 
Wart, the fourth conspirator, took no part in the murder, and yet, 
by a singular providence, was the only one that was ever caught 
and executed for the deed. The others escaped, although the 
King's attendants were in sight. Indeed the latter was so alarm- 
ed they took to flight, leaving their master to die alone, sustained 
and cheered only by a poor peasant girl, who held the royal dy- 
ing head upon her bosom. 

" Alone she sate : from hill and wood low sunk the mournful sun ; 
Fast gushed the fount of noble blood ; treason its worst had done. 
With her long hair she vainly pressed the wounds to staunch their tide : 
Unknown, on that meek humble breast imperial Albert died." 

On the friends and families of these murderers the children of 
Albert wreaked a most bloody vengeance. The remotest relative 
was hunted down and slain, and every friend offered up as a vic- 
tim to revenge, till one thousand is supposed to have fallen. Queen 



92 SABBATH IN BASLE. 

Agnes was accustomed to witness the executions, and seemed ac- 
tuated by the spirit of a fiend while the horrid butchery was go- 
ing on. On one occasion she saw sixty-three, one after another 
slain, and in the midst of the bloody spectacle exclaimed, " Now 
I bathe in May-dew." This convent of Koenigsfelden was en- 
dowed with the confiscated property of these murdered men, and 
here she ended her days. But her religious seclusion, prayers 
and almsgiving were powerless to wipe the blood from her con- 
science. The ghosts of her murdered and innocent victims rose 
up before her guilty spirit, and frightened peace from her bosom. 
Revenge had been gratified ; but she forgot that after it has been 
glutted with victims, it always turns round and gnaws at the heart 
which gave it birth. When she came to die, and the vision of 
that terrible and just tribunal that awaited her passed before her 
trembling spirit, she sent for a priest to give her absolution. 
" Woman," he replied, " God is not to be served with bloody 
hands, nor by the slaughter of innocent persons, nor by convents 
built with the plunder of widows and orphans, — but by mercy 
and forgiveness of injuries." Switzerland is full of these wild 
tales. They .meet you at every turn ; and you often start to be 
told you are standing on the grave of a murderer. 

Basle is the last town in Switzerland standing on the Rhine at 
the head of navigation. It contains a little over 21,000 inhabi- 
tants, an J is well worth a longer stay than the thousands of trav- 
ellers who yearly pass through ever give it. It was once one 
of the strictest of the Swiss cities in its sumptuary laws. Every 
person on the Sabbath, who went to church, was compelled to 
dress in black ; no carriage could enter the town after ten at 
night, and the luxury of a footman was forbidden. A set of of- 
ficers, called Unzichterherrn decided the number of dishes and the 
wines to be used at a dinner party, and also the cut and quality 
of all the clothes worn. Until fifty years ago, the time-pieces of 
this town were an hour in advance of all others in Europe. Tra- 
dition states that this curious custom had its origin in the deliver- 
ance of the place once from a band of conspirators by the town 
clock striking one instead of twelve. But the Swiss have a tra- 
dition to establish every custom. There is a curious head attach- 
ed to the clock tower standing on the bridge which connects the 



METHODISM IN BASLE. 93 

two towns. The movement of the pendulum causes a long tongue 
to protrude, and the eyes to roll about — " making faces," it is said, 
" at Little Basle on the opposite side of the river." 

Since the Reformation Basle has been the principal seat of 
Methodism in Switzerland. Formerly the citizens exhibited their 
piety in odd mottoes and doggrels placed over their doors in the 
public streets. These, of course, no longer remain, and the peo- 
ple are any thing but ^religious. Two of these strange mottoes 
we give from the guide book as a specimen of the pious Methodists 
of that time : 

" Auf Gott ich meine Hoffnung bau 
Und wohne in der Alien Sau" 
In God my hope of grace I big, 
And dwell within the Ancient Pig. 

" Wacht auf ihr Menschen und that Buss 
Ich heiss zum goldenen Rinderfuss." 
Wake and repent your sins with grief, 
I'm called the golden Shin of Beef. 

This was a queer mode of publishing to the traveller one's relig- 
ious opinions, but it shows to what ridiculous extremes fanaticism 
will carry a man. To the credit of the place I will say, however, 
that even now a carriage arriving at the gates of the town during 
church time on the Sabbath is compelled to wait there till service 
is over. 

Here one begins to think of the Rhine, "the glorious Rhine." 
'It goes rushing and foaming through Basle as if in haste to reach 
the vine-clad shores of Germany. The traveller, as he sees its 
waters darting onward, imbibes a portion of their anxiety, and is 
in haste to be borne along on their bosom to the shore below, so 
rich in associations and so marked in the history of man. 



94 SWISS CROSS-BOWS. 



XYIII. 
STRASBOURG— THE RHINE-FRANKFORT. 



One is constantly shown choice relics in passing through 
Switzerland, as well as in passing over Italy. Some, doubtless, 
are genuine, but which are so is the trouble. Thus, at Lucerne, 
in the public archives, I was shown the very sword William 
Tell was accustomed to swing before him in battle, and the very 
cross-bow from which he hurled the bolt into the tyrant's bosom. 
Both, however, are apocryphal. 1 forgot to mention, by the way, 
that these old Swiss cross-bows are not our Indian bows, but what 
school-boys call cross-guns. The bow, frequently made of steel, 
is fastened to a stock, and the arrow is launched along a groove. 
The bows of many of these are so stiff that it was with difficulty 
I could make them spring at all with my utmost strength. I 
might as well have pulled on a bar of iron. The stiffest of them 
even the strong-limbed mountaineer could not span with his un- 
aided strength, and was compelled to have cog wheels and a small 
crank attached to the stock, by winding which he was enabled to 
spring the bow. He thus accumulated tremendous force on the 
arrow, and when it was dismissed it went with the speed and 
power of a bullet. At Basle there is a large collection of relics, 
made by a private gentleman, who has sunk his fortune in it. 
Among other things are Bonaparte's robe worked by Josephine, 
in which he was crowned at Milan, and a neat rose- wood dressing 
case of the Empress, containing fifty secret drawers. 

But not to stop here, we will away down the Rhine. The 
river is here shallow and bad to navigate, and so I took the rail- 
road to Strasbourg, the lofty spire of whose cathedral rises to 



STRASBOURG CATHEDRAL. 95 

view long before the traveller reaches the town. This cathedral 
or minster is one of the finest Gothic buildings in Europe, and 
has the loftiest spire in the world, it being four hundred and 
seventy-four feet above the pavement. It is formed of stone and 
yet open like frost-work, and looks from below like a delicate 
cast iron frame. Yet there it stands and has stood, with the wind 
whistling through its open-work for centuries. Begun about the 
time of the Crusades by Erwin of Steinbach, it .was continued 
by his son, and afterwards by his daughter, and after that by 
others, and was finally finished 424 years after its foundation. I 
am not going to describe it ; but just stand outside, by the west 
end, and cast your eye over the noble face it presents. Over the 
solid part of the wall is thrown a graceful net- work of arcades and 
pillars, formed of stone, yet so delicately cut that it seems a cast- 
ing fastened on the surface. In the centre is a magnificent cir- 
cular window, like a huge eye, only it is fifty feet across, while 
the body of the building itself towers away 230 feet above you, 
or nearly as high as Trinity church, steeple and all, will be when 
finished. And over all is this beautiful netting of stone. When 
Trinity church is completed, clap another just like it, spire and all, 
on the top of its spire, and you have some conception of the man- 
ner the Strasbourg Minster lifts its head into the heavens. Among 
other things in the interior is the famous clock, which, till lately, 
has for a long time remained silent, because no mechanist could 
be found of sufficient skill to arrange its elaborate interior. It is 
about the size of a large organ, and tells not only the time of the 
day, but the changes of the seasons — exhibits the different phases 
of the moon — the complicated movements of the planets, bringing 
about in their appointed time the eclipses of the sun and moon, 
besides playing several tunes and performing various marches by 
way of pastime. It is a time-keeper, astronomer, almanac, 
mathematician, and musician at the same time. Every hour a 
procession appears on its face marching round to the sound of 
music, with some striking figure in the foreground. We waited 
to notice one performance, and the chief personage that came out 
to do us honour was old Father Time, with his scythe over his 
shoulder, and his head bowed down in grief, looking as if he were 
striking his last hour. Here lies Oberlin, and about a mile and 



96 PATE DE FOIES GRAS. 

a half distant, at Waldbach, is his house and library, standing 
just as he left them. 

Here for the first time I noticed the storks sitting quietly in 
their nests on the tops of the lofty chimnies, or stepping with their 
long legs and outstretched necks around on their perilous prome- 
nade. There is one street in this town called Brand Strasse (Fire 
Street), from the fact that in 1348 a huge bonfire was made where 
it runs, to burn the Hebrews; and 2,000 were consumed, for hav- 
ing, as it was declared, poisoned the wells and fountains of the 
town. Ah ! almost all Europe has been one wide Brand Strasse 
to this unfortunate people. 

Strasbourg is the great market for pates defoies gras, made, as 
it is known, of the livers of geese. These poor creatures are shut 
up in coops so narrow they cannot turn round in them, and then 
stuffed twice a day with Indian corn, to enlarge their livers, which 
have been known to swell till they reached the enormous weight 
of two pounds and a half. Garlick steeped in water is given them 
to increase their appetites. This invention is worthy of the French 
nation, where cooks are great as nobles. 

From this place to Mayence, down the Rhine, there is nothing 
of interest except the old city of Worms, immortal for the part it 
played in the Reformation. It is now half desolate, but I looked 
upon it with the profoundest emotions. Luther rose before me 
with that determined brow and strange, awful eye of his, before 
which the boldest glance went down. I seemed to behold him as 
he approached the thronged city. Every step tells on the fate of 
a world, and on the single will of that single man rests the whole 
Reformation. But he is firm as truth itself, and in the regular 
beatings of that mighty heart, and the unfaltering step of that fear- 
less form, the nations read their destiny. The Rhine is lined with 
battle fields, and mighty chieftains lie along its banks ; but there 
never was the march of an army on its shores, not even when 
Bonaparte trod there with his strong legions, so sublime and awful 
as the approach of that single man to Worms. The fate of a na- 
tion hung on the tread of one — that of the world on the other. 
Crowns and thrones were carried by the former — the freedom of 
mankind by the latter. What is the headlong valour of Bonaparte 
on the bridge of Lodi, the terrible charge of McDonald at Wag- 



LUTHER. 97 

ram, or Ney at Waterloo, compared to the steady courage of this 
fearless man, placing himself single-handed against kings and 
princes, and facing down the whole visible church of God on 
earth, with its prisons and torture and death placed before him. 
But there was a mightier power at work within him than human 
will or human courage — the upstaying and uplifting spirit of God 
bearing on the heart with its sweet promise, and nerving it with 
its divine strength, till it could throb as calmly in the earthquake 
as in the sunshine. Still his was a bold spirit, daring all and 
more than man dare do. 

The Rhine here is a miserable stream enough, flowing amid 
low marshy islands, and over a flat country, so that you seem to 
be moving through a swamp rather, than down the most beautiful 
river of Europe. The boat will now be entangled in a perfect 
crowd of these mud islands till there seems no way of escape, and 
now, caught in a current, go dashing straight on to another ; and 
just when the crash is expected, and you are so near you could 
easily leap ashore, it shoots away like an arrow, and floats on the 
broad lake-like bosom of the stream. Nothing can be more stupid 
than the descent of the Rhine to Mayence. 

Here I crossed the river and took cars for Frankfort-on-the- 
Maine. Here, also, I first noticed those huge rafts of timber 
which are brought from the mountains of Germany and floated 
down to Holland. One was moving down towards the bridge, 
four hundred feet long, and nearly three hundred wide, sprin- 
kled over with the cabins of the navigators, who, with their fam- 
ilies, amounted to between two and three hundred persons. I 
supposed the spectacle of such immense masses of floating timber 
was one of the peculiar features of our western world, and I did 
not expect such a wild and frontier scene here on the Rhine. 

There are three classes of cars on the railroad to Frankfort. 
The first is fitted up for the delicate tastes of noble blood, though 
free to all. The second is better than any railroad carriage I 
ever saw at home, and the third very passable. Taking the sec- 
ond as more becoming my rank, I sped off for Frankfort. O^ 
this free town 1 will say only that the belt of shrubbery and flow- 
ers going entirely round it, with carriage drives and promenades 
between, looks like a beautiful wreath encircling it, and occupy- 



98 MOTHER OF THE ROTHSCHILDS. 

ing as it does the place of the old line of forts, is a sweet emblem 
of the change that is yet to come over the cities of the world from 
the peaceful influence of the gospel. The two things that inter- 
ested me most were, the house in which Goethe was born, showing 
by its fine exterior that poverty was not the inheritance of one 
poet at least, — and the Jews' street, at one end of which stands 
the palace of the Rothschilds. The Jews here, as every where, 
are old clothes men, and the street is black with garments hang- 
ing before the dwellings to tempt the purchaser. The Rothschilds 
have built their palace at the end of the street, but facing one of 
the most fashionable streets of the town. Thus they stand with 
one foot among the Jews and the other among Christians. I was 
struck with one little incident illustrating the tenacity with which 
a Hebrew clings to his despised people. The mother of the 
Rothschilds still lives among the old clothes in the midst of her 
kindred, and steadily refuses to dwell with her children in their 
magnificent palace. Like Ruth she says to her people, " Where 
thou goest I will go, and thy God shall be my God." I love this 
strong affection for her persecuted race, choosing, as it does, 
shame and disgrace with them, rather than honour and riches with 
the world. Even here, in this enlightened town, until eleven 
years ago, there was an edict in force restricting, the number of 
marriages among the Hebrews to thirteen per year. 



MINERAL SPRINGS OF WEISBADEN. 99 



XIX. 

A DAT IN WIESBADEN 



Wiesbaden is the Saratoga of Germany and the chief town in 
the Duchy of Nassau. The Duke is the King of this little prov- 
ince containing 855,715 inhabitants, of whom a little over half 
are Protestants, 5,845 Jews, and the rest Catholics. This small 
duchy is filled with Brunnens, or bubbling springs ; but before I 
give a description of them, let me sketch a day in Wiesbaden. 
At five o'clock in the morning, the servant, in obedience to my 
orders, knocked at my door, and with a bright sun just rising over 
the Taunus mountains to greet me, I threaded my way to the hot 
springs, a short distance from the centre of the village. A crowd 
had arrived before me, and were scattered around over the open 
area, or passing up and down the promenades, carrying a glass of 
the steaming water in their hands, waving it backwards and for- 
wards in the morning air, and blowing upon the surface to cool it 
for drinking. This water is so hot it cannot be drank for some 
time after it is dipped up, and the vessel containing it cannot be 
grasped for a single moment in the hand. A handle, therefore, is 
attached to all the vessels, in which each invalid receives his por- 
tion of the scalding fluid. I stood for a long time convulsed with 
laughter at the scene that opened before me as I approached this 
spiing, notwithstanding the sobering effects of the early morning 
air. Now an old man tottered away from the steaming spring, 
bowing over his glass, which he held with trembling hand close 
to his face, and blowing with the most imperturbable gravity and 
dolorous countenance on the scalding fluid. Close behind him 
shot along a peppery Frenchman, puffing away at his drink, and 
swinging it backwards and forwards with such velocity and abrupt- 



100 MANNER OF DRINKING THE WATER. 

ness, .that a portion of the hot water at length spilled over on his 
hand, when he dropped the vessel as if he had been bitten by a 
snake, and, with a dozen sacres, stood scowling over the broken 
fragments that lay scattered at his feet. Old and young women 
were walking along the promenades utterly absorbed in their cup 
of boiling water, which it required the nicest balancing to keep 
from spilling over. This intense attention of so many people to 
the single object of keeping their cups right end up, and yet swing 
them as far and rapid as possible in order to cool the water, was 
irresistibly comical. Almost every man's character could be dis- 
cerned in the way he carried his cup, and the success which at- 
tended his operations. Your quiet lazy man sat down on a bench, 
put his vessel beside him, and crossing his legs, waited with the 
most composed mien the sure operation of the laws of nature to 
cool his dose, while the ardent impatient personage kept shaking 
and blowing his tumbler, and sipping every now and then, to the 
no slight burning of his lips. 

After having watched for a while this to me novel spectacle, I 
stepped up to the spring and received from a young girl my por- 
tion of this boiling broth, and commenced my promenade, present- 
ing, probably, to some other traveller, as ridiculous a figure as 
those who had just excited my mirth exhibited to me. 

The taste of this water, when partially cooled, is precisely like 
chicken broth. Says a humorous English traveller, of this spring, 
(Sir Francis Head,) " If I were to say that, while drinking it, one 
hears in one's ears the cackling of hens, and that one sees feath- 
ers flying before one's eyes, I should certainly greatly exaggerate ; 
but when I declare that it exactly resembles very hot chicken 
broth, I only say what Dr. Grenville said, and what, in fact, every 
body says, and must say, respecting it, and certainly I do wonder 
why the common people should be at the inconvenience of making 
bad soup, when they can get much better from nature's great 
stock-pot, the Kochbrunnen of Wiesbaden. At all periods of the 
year, summer and winter, the temperature of this broth remains 
the same ; and when one reflects that it has been bubbling out of 
the ground, and boiling over, in the very same state, certainly 
from the time of the Romans, and probably from the time of the 
flood, it is really astonishing what a most wonderful apparatus 



THE KUR SAAL. 101 



there must exist below, what an inexhaustible stock of provisions 
to ensure such an everlasting supply of broth always formed of 
the same eight or ten ingredients, always salted to exactly the 
same degree, and always served up at exactly the same heat. 
One would think that some of the particles in the recipe would 
be exhausted : in short, to speak metaphorically, that the chickens 
would at last be boiled to rags, or that the fire would go out for 
want of coals ; but the oftener one reflects on this sort of subjects, 
the oftener is the oldfashioned observation forced upon the mind, 
that let a man go where he will, Omnipotence is never from his 
view." 

This water, like that of Saratoga, is good for every thing : for 
those too fat and those too lean, for those too hot and those too 
cold, for all ages and conditions and sexes. After having swal- 
lowed a sufficient quantity of this broth, and what is better still, 
a good breakfast, I wandered two miles, through shaded walks, 
from the Kur Saal to the picturesque ruins of Sonnenberg Castle. 
Lying down under its shady trees, and away from the noise of 
the bustling little village. I forgot for a while, Wiesbaden, Koch- 
brunnen, chicken broth, and all. 

This Kur Saal is a magnificent hotel, built by the Duke, and 
capable of seating several hundred at dinner. The main saloon 
is 130 feet long, 60 wide, and 50 feet high. The price for dinner 
is the very reasonable sum of some thirty-four or five cents. 
Back of this building is an open area, with seats in it, where hun- 
dreds, after dinner, sit and drink coffee ; and farther on, a passa- 
ble pond, beautiful shrubbery, and countless walks. I hardly 
know a pleasanter spot to spend a week or two in than Wies- 
baden, were it not for the gambling that is constantly practised. 
In the public rooms of the Kur Saal are roulette tables and other 
apparatus for gambling, which after dinner, and especially in the 
evening, are surrounded with persons of both sexes, most of 
whom stake more or less money. Directly opposite me at dinner, 
sat a young man whose countenance instantly attracted my at- 
tention. He was very pale and thin, while his cold blue eye, 
high cheek bones, and almost marble whiteness and hardness of 
features, together with a sullen, morose aspect, made me shrink 
from him as from some deadly thing. Added to all this, when 



102 A GAMBLER. 



he rose from the table, I saw he had an ugly limp, which made 
him seem more unnatural and monster-like than before. 

Wandering soon after through the rooms, seeing what was to 
be seen, I came to a roulette table around which were gathered 
gentlemen and ladies of all nations and ages, some of them sta- 
king small sums apparently for mere amusement. Just then, this 
sullen cadaverous looking young man came limping up, and de- 
posited a roll of twenty Napoleons or about $80. A single turn 
of the wheel, and it was lost. He quietly drew forth another 
roll, which was also quickly lost. Without the least agitation or 
apparent excitement he thus continued to draw forth one roll af- 
ter another till ten of them or about $800 were gone. He then 
as quietly, and without saying a single word, limped away. He 
had not spoken or changed a muscle the whole time, and mani- 
fested no more anxiety or regret than if he had lost only so many 
pennies. " There," said I to myself, as he sauntered away, 
" goes a professed gambler, and he has all the qualities for a suc- 
cessful one. Perfectly cool and self-possessed under the most 
provoking reverses, he does not get angry and rave at fickle, per- 
verse fortune,- but takes it all as a matter of business." I then 
knew, for the first time, why I felt such an antipathy towards 
him. A gambler carries his repulsive soul in. his face, in his 
eye, nay, almost in his very gait. He makes a chilling atmos- 
phere around him that repels every one that approaches him. 
Gambling seems to metamorphose a man more than any other 
crime except murder. 

But let us away from this contaminating influence, and forth 
into God's beautiful world — into the forest, and beauty and bloom 
of nature, where one can breathe free again, and feel the sooth- 
ing and balmy influence of the summer wind as it creeps over 
the mountain ridges. The sun is stooping to the western world, 
hasting, as it were, to my own beloved land, and the dark forests 
of the Taunus seem to wave an invitation to their cool shades. 

" Taking a guide with me, I mounted a donkey and started for 
11 Die Platte," or the duke's hunting seat, four miles distant, on 
the very summit of the Taunus. For a long while we trotted 
along together, when, all at once, a flock of deer burst from the 
thicket, and bounded across our path. Going a little way into the 



HUNTING CHATEAU. 103 

wood, they stopped, and allowed me to urge ray donkey to within 
a few rods of them. Indeed they seemed almost as tame as sheep. 
I asked my guide what would be the penalty if he should shoot 
one of those deer. " Three years' imprisonment," he replied. 
" In my country," said I, "there are plenty of deer, and you can 
shoot one down wherever you find it, and have it after it is killed." 
He looked at me a moment, in astonishment, and then simply said, 
" That must be a strange country." A strange country indeed 
to him, who was going through a wide unbroken forest, and yet 
could not even take a wild bird's nest without paying a fine of five 
florins. At length we reached the duke's hunting seat, a white 
cubic building, standing alone and naked on the very summit of 
the hill. Two huge bronze stags stand at the entrance, while 
immense antlers are nailed up in every part of the hall, and 
along the staircase, with a paper under each, telling that it was 
shot by the duke, and the date of the remarkable achievement. I 
could not but smile at this little piece of ostentation, as I had just 
seen how difficult it must be to kill one of these deer. Ihad rode 
on horseback (or, rather, donkeyback) to within pistol shot of four 
as fine fellows as ever tossed their antlers through the forest, and 
then was compelled to halloo to frighten them aw 7 ay. I am afraid 
the duke would hardly show as many trophies if compelled to hunt 
his game in our primeval forests. The chief room of this building 
is circular, and has a row of antlers going entirely around it, 
halfway up the lofty ceiling ; while every piece of furniture in 
it — chairs, sofas, stools, and all — are made of deer' horns in their 
natural state. I suppose they must have been steamed and bent 
into the very convenient shapes they certainly present. The 
cushions are all made of tanned deer-skins, adorned with hunting 
scenes, forest landscapes, &c. From the top of this hunting 
chateau I saw the glorious Rhine, flowing, in a waving line, 
through the landscape, while cultivated fields and vineyards, and 
forest-covered hills, and old castles, and towers, and cottages 
spread away on the excited vision in all the irregular harmony 
of nature ; and the glorious orb of day threw its farewell light over 
the whole, as it dropped to its repose over distant France. I turn- 
ed back to Wiesbaden, through the deepening shades of the forest, 



104 A LADY GAMBLER. 



greeted ever and anon, by the flitting form of a noble deer, as he 
bounded away to his evening shelter. 

At night the Kur Saal is thronged with persons of both sexes ; — 
and, as I strolled through it, I came again upon a gambling table, 
around which were sitting gentlemen and ladies of every age and 
nation. English girls were teasing their " papas" for a few sove- 
reigns to stake on the turning of a card, and old men were watch- 
ing the changes of the game with all the eagerness of youth. 
One lady, in particular, attracted my attention. She was from 
Belgium, and her whole appearance indicated a person from the 
upper ranks of society. To an elegant form she added a com- 
plexion of incomparable whiteness, which contrasted beautifully 
with her rich auburn tresses that flowed in ample ringlets around 
her neck. Clad in simple white, and adorned with a profusion of 
jewels, she took her seat by the table, while her husband stood 
behind her chair ; and, with her delicate white hand on a pile of 
money before her, entered at once into the excitement of the game. 
As she sat, and with her small rake drew to her, or pushed from 
her, the money she won or lost, I gazed on her with feelings with 
which I had never before contemplated a woman. I did not think 
it was possible for an elegant and well-dressed lady to fill me with 
feelings of such utter disgust. Her very beauty became ugliness, 
and her auburn tresses looked more unbecoming than the elfin 
locks of a sorceress. Her appearance and her occupation pre- 
sented such an utter contrast, that she seemed infinitely uglier to 
me than the cold-blooded, cadaverous looking gambler I had seen 
lose his money a few hours before. While I was mentally com- 
paring them, in he came, limping towards the table. I was half 
tempted to peep round and see if he had not a cloven foot. With 
the same marble-like features and forbidding aspect he approach- 
ed and laid down a roll of twenty Napoleons. He won, and putting 
down another, won again ; and thus he continued, winning one 
after another, till he had got back the ten rolls he had lost before, 
and two in addition. Then, without waiting for fortune to turn 
against him, he walked away, not having spoken a word. 

Turning to a bath-house, I threw myself into the steaming 
water for an hour, and then retired to my couch. These baths 
are so large one can swim around in them, and are arranged in a 



CURIOUS MODE OF BATHING. 105 

row, with only a high partition between them, so that you can 
hear every splash and groan of your neighbour in the next apart- 
ment. On one side of me was an old man, apparently, whose 
kicks, at long intervals, told me he was yet alive. Some two or 
three women were on the other side, whose laughter and rapid 
German kept up a constant Babel, while the steam came rolling 
up over where I lay like the smoke from a coal-pit. I do not 
know what idea these^ Germans have of delicacy, but this hearing 
your neighbours kicking and splashing around you, while the 
whole building is open the entire length overhead, would not be 
tolerated in my own country. 

It must, be remembered that these gambling " hells" are not in 
out of the way places, but meet you as they would if placed in 
the public rooms of the hotels at Saratoga, and were patronized by 
the fashionables of both sexes from New York city. Methinks 
it is time another Luther had arisen to sweep away this chaff of 
Germany. 



106 THE NEIDER SELTERS. 



XX. 

SCHWALBACH AND SCHLANGENBAD. 



There are other mineral waters in Nassau besides those of 
Wiesbaden, and differing from them entirely in taste and temper- 
ature. Schwalbach contains several springs very much like the 
Congress, Pavilion and Iodine Springs of Saratoga. One called 
the Weinbrunnen, from the fancied resemblance of the water to 
wine, reminds one very much of the sparkling water of the Pa- 
vilion Spring. The Stahlbrunnen and the Pauline in the same 
place, differ from each other only in the little different proportions 
in which iron and carbonic acid gas are found in them. It is but 
a day's ride from this to the famous Nieder Selters, the spring 
from which the well known and almost universally circulated 
Seltzer water is obtained. Sir Francis Head's description of this 
spring and the mode of obtaining the water is better than any I 
could give. Says he : " On approaching a large circular shed 
covered with a slated roof, supported by posts but open on all 
sides, I found the single brunnen or well from which this highly 
celebrated water is forwarded to almost every quarter of the globe 
— to India, the West Indies, the Mediterranean, Paris, London, 
and to almost every city in Germany. The hole, which was 
about five feet square, was bounded by a framework of four 
strong beams mortised together, and the bottom of the shed being 
boarded, it resembled very much, both ;n shape and dimensions, 
one of the hatches in the deck of a slip. A small crane with 
three arms, to each of which there was suspended a square iron 
crate or basket a little smaller than the brunnen, stood about ten 
feet off; and while peasant girls, with a stone bottle (holding 
three pints) dangling on every finger of each hand, were rapidly 



MODE OF FILLING THE BOTTLES. 107 

filling two of these crates, which contained seventy bottles, a man 
turned the third by a winch, until it hung immediately over the 
brunnen, into which it then rapidly descended. The air in these 
seventy bottles being immediately displaced by the water, a great 
bubbling of course ensued, but in about twenty seconds this hav- 
ing subsided, the crate was raised ; and while seventy more 
bottles descended from another arm of the crane, a fresh set of 
girls curiously carried ^off these full bottles, one on each finger 
of each hand, ranging them in long rows upon a large table or 
dresser, also beneath the shed. No sooner were they there than 
two men, with surprising activity, put a cork into each ; while 
two drummers, with a long stick in each of their hands, hammer- 
ing them down, appeared as if they were playing upon musical 
glasses. Another set of young women now instantly carried 
them off, four and five in each hand, to men who, with sharp 
knives, sliced off the projecting part of the cork ; and this opera- 
tion being over, the poor jaded bottles were delivered over to 
women, each of whom actually covered three thousand of them a 
day with white leather, which they firmly bound with pack-thread 
round the corks ; and then, without placing the bottles on the 
ground, they delivered them over to a man seated beside them, 
who, without any apology, dipped each of their noses into boiling 
hot rosin, and before they had recovered from this unexpected 
operation, the Duke of Nassau's seal was stamped upon them by 
another man, when then they were hurried, sixteen and twenty at 
a time, by girls, to magazines, where they peacefully remained 
ready for exportation. 

" Having followed a set of bottles from the brunnen to the store 
where I left them resting from their labours, I strolled to another 
part of the establishment, where were empty bottles calmly wait- 
ing for their turn to be filled. I here counted twenty-five bins of 
bottles, each four yards broad, six yards deep, and eight feet high. 
A number of young girls were carrying thirty-four of -them at a 
time to an immense reservoir, which was kept constantly full, by 
a large fountain pipe, of beautiful, clear fresh water." 

Speaking of the number of bottles that strew the road in every 
direction, and make the very place look as if it had been once 
made of bottles and overthrown in a thunder storm, leaving its 



108 NUMBER OF BOTTLES EXPORTED. 

wreck on the ground, he says : " The little children really looked 
as if they were made of bottles : some wore a pyramid of them in 
baskets on their heads ; — some of them were laden with them, 
hanging over their shoulders, before and behind ; — some carried 
them strapped round their middle, all their hands full ; and the 
little urchins that could scarcely walk, were advancing, each 
hugging in its arms one single bottle ! In fact, at Nieder Selters 
' an infant' means a being totally unable to carry a bottle; pu- 
berty and manhood are proved by bottles ; a strong man brags of 
the number he can carry, and superannuation means being no 
longer able in this world to bear- bottles. 

" The road to the brunnen is actually strewed with fragments, 
and so are the ditches ; and when the reader is informed that, be- 
sides all he has so patiently heard, bottles are not only expended, 
filled and exported, but actually made at Nieder Selters, he must 
admit that no writer can do justice to that place unless every line 
of his description contains at least once the word — bottle. The 
moralists of Nieder Selters preach on bottles. Life, they say, is 
a sound bottle, and death a cracked one. Thoughtless men are 
empty bottles; drunken men are leaky ones; and a man highly 
educated, fit to appear in any country and any society, is of 
course, a bottle corked, rosined, and stamped with the seal of the 
Duke of Nassau." 

This humorous and graphic description will not be thought 
much exaggerated when we remember that nearly a million and 
a half of bottles are annually carried out of that small inland 
German town, to say nothing of another million and a half bro- 
ken there. In the year 1832 there were exported from that 
spring 1,295,183 bottles. If they were all quart bottles, it would 
amount to over a thousand barrels of mineral water, which annu- 
ally goes down somebodies' throats. This valuable spring was 
originally bought by the ancestor of the Duke for a single butt of 
wine, and it now yields a nett profit of over 826,000 per annum. 

Schlangenbad, or the Serpent's bath, is another of the brunnens 
of Nassau. Schlangenbad is in a secluded spot, and takes its 
name from the quantity of snakes that live about it, swimming 
around in the spring and crawling through the houses with tiie ut- 
most liberty. The wa'.ers are celebrated for their effect on the 



LEGEND OF THE SERPENT'S BATH. 109 

skin, reducing it almost to marble whiteness. The most invete- 
rate wrinkles and the roughest skin become smooth and white 
under the wonderful effects of this water. Acting as a sort of 
corrosive, it literally scours a man white, and then soaks him soft 
and smooth. Says Francis Head, "I one day happened to over- 
hear a fat Frenchman say to his friend, after he had been lying 
in one of these baths a half an hour : ' Monsieur, dans ces bains 
ou devient dbsolument amoureux de soi meme.' 'Sir, in these 
baths, one absolutely becomes enamoured of himself.' " So 
great is the effect of this water on the skin, that it is bottled and 
sent to the most distant parts of Europe as a cosmetic. 

The Germans have some mysterious origin to every thing, and 
what the Italians refer to the Madonna, they attribute to some in- 
definite mysterious agency. This spring, they say, was discov- 
ered by a sick heifer. Having been wasting away a long time, 
till her bones seemed actually to be pushing through her skin, and 
she was given up by the herdsman to die ; she all at once disap- 
peared and was gone for several weeks. No one thought of her, 
as it was supposed she was dead, but one day she unexpectedly 
returned, a sleek, fat, bright-eyed and nimble heifer. Every 
evening, however, she disappeared, which excited the curiosity of 
the herdsman so that he at length followed her, when to his sur- 
prise he saw her approach this spring, then unknown, from which 
having drank, ^he quietly returned. Not long after, a beautiful 
young lady began to waste away precisely like the heifer, and 
all medicines and nursing were in vain, and she was given over 
to die. 

The herdsman who had seen the wonderful cure performed on 
one of his herd being told of her sickness, went to her and besought 
her to try the spring. Like a sensible man, he thought what was 
good for the heifer was good for the woman. She consented to 
try the remedy, and in a few weeks was one of the freshest, fat- 
test, plumpest young women in all the country round.. From that 
moment, of course, the fame of the spring was secured, and it has 
gone on increasing in reputation, till now the secluded spot is vis- 
ited by persons from every part of Europe. 

The duchy of Nassau is a beautiful portion of Germany, and 

17 



110 DESPOTISM OF THE DUKE OF NASSAU. 

if the Duke would only abrogate, like a sensible man, some of his 
foolish tyrannical feudal laws, and become a father to his subjects, 
it would be a delightful spot every way. But the petty prince of 
every petty province seems to think he is more like a king the 
more despotic he behaves. 



MAYENCE. . Ill 



XXI. 

MAYENCE-THE RHINE. 



Mayence or Mainz lies at the upper termination of the fine 
scenery of the Rhine. From this to Coblenz, nearly sixty miles, 
this river is lined with towns, and convents, and castles, as rich 
in association as the ruins around Rome. 

Mayence has its sights for the traveller, among which are the 
cathedral, the ruins of an old Roman structure, a museum of 
paintings, several monuments, &c, which I will pass over. 
There are two things worth recording of Mayence. It was here 
the famous Hanseatic League (the result of the Rhenish League) 
was formed by a confederation of cities. It was the first effec- 
tual blow aimed against unjust restrictions on commerce. Rob- 
ber chieftains had lined the Rhine from Cologne to Mayence with 
castles, which frowned down on the river that washed their foun- 
dations ; and levied tribute on every passing vessel. In the mid- 
dle ages there were thirty-two " toll-gates" of these bold highway- 
men on the river. Now the only chieftain on the Rhine who is 
still allowed to hold and exercise his feudal right, is the Duke of 
Nassau. Under this strong confederation, the haughty castles 
one after another went down, and there is now scarcely a ruin 
that does not bear the mark of the Emperor Rudolph's stroke. 
Commerce was freed from the heavy exactions that weighed it 
down, and sailed with spreading canvass and fearless prow under 
the gloomy shadows of the towers that had once been its terror 
and destroyer. 

Byron looked on these castles with the eye of a poet, and felt 
vastly more sympathy for the robber chieftains that lived by vio- 
lence, than for the peaceful traders whose bodies were often left 



112 THE CHIEFS OF THE RHINE. 

floating down the Rhine. It is well for the world that those who 
formed the Hanseatic League were not poets of the Lara, Childe 
Harold, and Manfred school. Seeing very little romance in hav- 
ing their peaceful inhabitants fired upon by robbers who were 
fortunate enough to live in castles, they wisely concluded to put 
a stop to it. Had they not taken this practical view of the mat- 
ter, Byron would probably not have been allowed to poetise so 
much at his leisure and with such freedom of expression, as he did 
when he sung of the "chiefless castles breathing stern farewells." 

" And there they stand as stands a lofty mind, 

Worn but unstooping to the baser crowd, 

All tenantless save to the crannying wind, 

Or holding dark communion with the cloud. 

There was a day when they were young and proud, 

Banners on high and battles passed below ; 

But they who fought are in a bloody shroud, 

And those which waved are shredless dust ere now, 
And the bleak battlements shall bear no future blow. 

Beneath those battlements, within those walls, 
Power dwelt amidst her passions ; in proud state 
Each robber chief upheld his armed halls, 
Doing his evil will, nor less elate 
Than mightier heroes of a longer date. 
What want these outlaw conquerors should have, 
But history's purchased page to call them great? 
A wider space an ornamented grave, 
Their hopes were not less warm, their souls were full as brave 

In their baronial feuds and single fields 
What deeds of prowess unrecorded died ? 
And Love, which lent a blazon to their shields, 
With emblems well devised by amorous pride, 
Through all the mail of iron hearts would glide ; 
But still their flame was fierceness, and drew on 
Keen contest and destruction near allied, 
And many a tower for some fair mischief won, 
Saw the discoloured Rhine, beneath its ruin run. 

But thou, exulting and abounding river ! 
Making thy waves a blessing as they flow 



THE FIRST PRINTING PRESS. 113 

Through banks whose beauty would endure forever 
Could man but leave thy bright creations so, 
Nor its fair promise from the surface mow 
With the sharp scythe of conflict, — then to see 
Thy valley of sweet waters, were to know 
Earth proved like Heaven ; and. to seem such to me, 
Even now what wants thy stream ? — that it should Lethe be. 

A thousand battles have assailed thy banks, 
But these and half their fame have passed away, 
And Slaughter heaped on high his welt'riug ranks, 
Their very graves are gone, and what are they ? 
Thy tide washed down the blood of yesterday : 
. And all was stainless, and on thy clear stream 
Glossed with its dancing light the sunny ray, 
But o'er the blackened memory's blighting dream 
Thy waves would vainly roll, all sweeping as they seem." 

Thus mused the haughty misanthropic bard along the Rhine ;— 
and these few sentences, by the conflicting sentiments that per- 
vade them, exhibit the perfect chaos of principle and feeling amid 
which he struggled with more desperation than wisdom. One 
moment he expresses regret that those old feudal chiefs have 
passed away, declaring, on the faith of a bard, that they were as 
good as their destroyers, and the next moment pours his note of 
lamentation over the evils of war. 

The other notable event in the history of Mayence is — the first 
printing press was established here. 

There is a monument here to Gensfleisch (goose flesh), called 
Gutemberg, a native of the place, who was the inventor of move- 
able types. This first printing office, occupied by him between 
the years 1443 and 1450, is still standing. One could moralize 
over it an hour. From the first slow arrangement of those move- 
able types to the present diffusion of printed matter, what a long 
stride ! He who could hear the first crippled movement of that min- 
iature press, the only one whose faint sound rose from this round 
earth ; and then catch the din and thunder of the "ten thousand 
times ten thousand" steam presses that are shaking the very con- 
tinents on which they rest, with their fierce action ; would see an 
onward step in the progress of the race more prophetic of change 

9 



114 BRIDGE OF BOATS. 

than in the conquests of the Caesars. The quiet, thoughtful Gens- 
fleisch little knew what an- earthquake he was generating as he 
slowly distributed those few types. If the sudden light which 
rushed on the world had burst on his vision, and the shaking of 
empires and sound of armies, set in motion by the diffusion of 
thougnts and truths which the press had scattered on its lightning- 
like pinions, met his ear, he would have been alarmed at his la- 
bour, and trembled as he held the first printed leaf in his hand. 
That printed page was a richer token to the desponding world 
than the olive leaf which the dove bore back to the Ark from the 
subsiding deluge. Men, as they roam by the Rhine, talk of old 
Schomberg and Blucher and Ney, and heroes of martial renown, 
but John Gensfleisch and Martin Luther are the two mightiest 
men that lie along its shores. The armies that struggled here, are 
still, and their renowned battle-fields have returned again to the 
hand of the husbandman ; but the struggle commenced by these 
men has not yet reached its height, and the armies they marshall- 
ed not yet counted their numbers, or fought their greatest battle. 

Well, brave Gutemberg, (to descend from great things to small) 
I here, on triy own moveable types, lay my offering to thee, and 
salute thee "greater than a king." 

A bridge of boats, one thousand six hundred and sixty-six feet 
long, here crosses the Rhine to Cassel, the railroad depot for 
Frankfort and Wiesbaden. It is strongly fortified, and commands 
the bridge in a manner that would make the passage of it by a 
hostile army, like the passage of the bridge of Lodi. The boats 
which form it lie with their heads up stream, secured to the bed 
of the river by strong fastenings ; and covered with planks. Sec- 
tions here and there swing back to admit the free passage of boats, 
while nearly half of the whole line is compelled to retire before 
one of those immense rafts ?f timber which are floated down the 
Rhine. 



ASSOCIATIONS OF THE RHINE. 115 



XXII. 

THE CASTELLATED RHINE 



" The Rhine ! the Rhine !" which has been the shout of glad 
armies, as its silver sheen flashed on their eyes as they came 
over the surrounding heights, is interesting more from its associa- 
tion than its scenery. The changes that have come over the 
world are illustrated more strikingly here than even in Rome. 
The old convent where the jolly friar revelled, is converted into 
a manufactory— the steamboat is rushing past the nodding castles 
of feudal chiefs — the modern town straggling through the ruins 
of once lordly cities, and all the motion and excitement of the 
nineteenth century, over the unburied corpses of the first fourteen 
centuries. There is probably no river on our globe more rich 
in associations than the Rhine. Navigable for over six hundred 
miles, through the very heart of Europe, its dominion has been 
battled for for nineteen centuries. From the time the Roman 
legions trod its shores, and shouted victory in good classic Latin,, 
or retired before the fierce charge of barbaric warriors ; to the 
middle ages, when feudal chiefs reared their castles here, and 
performed deeds of daring and chivalry that dimly live in old 
traditions ; it has been the field of great exploits, and witnessed the 
most important event of European history. It has been no less the 
scene of stirring events in modern times. The French Revolu- 
tion, after it had reduced France to chaos, rolled heavily towards 
the Rhine. On its banks was the first great struggle between the 
young and strong Democracy, and the haughty, but no longer 
vigorous Feudalism. Here kingship first trembled for its crown 
and throne, and Europe gathered in haste to save its tottering 
monarchies. On its shores France stood and shouted to the 



116 SCENERY OF THE RHINE. 

nations beyond, sending over the startled waters the cry, " All 
men are born free and equal," till the murmur of the people 
answered it. The Rhine has seen the armies of the Coesars along 
its banks — the castles of feudal chiefs flinging their shadows over 
its placid bosom — the printing press rise in its majesty beside it, 
and the stern Luther tread along its margin muttering words that 
shook the world. It has also borne Bonaparte and his strong 
legions on, yet amid it all — amid crumbling empires, and through 
the smoke of battle — undisturbed by the violence and change that 
have ploughed up its banks, lined them with kingdoms, and 
strewed them with their ruins — it has ever rolled, the same quiet 
current, to the sea. Its scenery is also beautiful, but not so much 
when viewed from its surface as when seen from the different 
points of prospect furnished by the heights around. From the 
old castles on the shores and the ridges beyond, the landscape has 
almost endless variations, yet is always beautiful. 

Byron has combined all the striking features' of the Rhine ;n 
a single verse, yet coloured some of them a little too highly. 

"The negligently grand, the fruitful bloom, 
Of coming ripeness, the white city's sheen, 
The rolling stream, the precipice's gloom, 
The forest's growth, and Gothic walls between, 
The wild rocks shaped as they had turrets been 
In mockery of man's art ; and these withal 
A race of faces happy as the scene, 
Whose fertile bounties here extend to all, 
Still springing o'er thy banks, though empires near them fall." 

Almost every castle has, with its real history, some wild tradi- 
tion connected; which, though it may or may not be true, adds 
great interest to the mysterious ruin. In looking over the guide 
book I was struck with the number of " outline sketches'' for 
magazine tales — thrilling novels, &c, furnished on almost every 
page. In a few sentences will be told the fate of some old feudal 
lord, or his beautiful daughter, of whose private history one would 
gladly know more. Thus at Bracsembcrg are the ruins of two 
castles, of one of which, the Bromserhof, we are told that " tra- 
dition says, that one of these knights, Bonser of Rudesheim, on 



TRADITION OF BRAESEMBERG. 117 



repairing to Palestine, signalized himself by destroying a dragon, 
which was the terror of the Christian army. No sooner had he 
accomplished it, than he was taken prisoner by the Saracens; and 
while languishing in captivity, he made a vow, that if ever he 
returned to his castle of Rudesheim, he would devote his only 
daughter, Gisela, to the church. He arrived at length, a pilgrim, 
at his castle, and was met by his daughter, now grown into a 
lovely woman. Gisela loved, and was beloved by a young knight 
from a neighbouring castle, and she heard with consternation her 
father's vow. Her tears and entreaties could not change his 
purpose. He threatened her with his curse if she did not obey ; 
and in the midst of a violent storm, she precipitated herself from 
the tower of the castle into the Rhine below. The fishermen 
found her corpse the next day in the river, by the tower of Hatto, 
and the boatmen and vintagers at this day fancy they sometimes 
see the pale form of Gisela hovering about the ruined tower, and 
hear her voice mingling its lamentations with the mournful whis- 
tlings of the wind." I leave to some one else the filling up this 
outline. There is the scene of the first interview of this selfish 
old Jephtha with his daughter — the wild meetings of the two 
lovers — the pleadings with the father — the rash purposes, and the 
final leap from the castle tower, of the beautiful Gisela — all fair 
property for the weaver of romances — a sort of schedule already 
made out for him. 

This tower of Hatto, at the base of which was found the form 
of Gisela, is some distance farther down the river. In descending 
to it one passes the vineyards of the famed Rudesheim wine, and 
the white castle of St. Roch. The Bishop of Hatto has been im- 
mortalized by Southey, in his " Traditions of Bishop Hatto," com- 
mencing with the imaginative line 

" The summer and autumn had been so wet." 

Here begins the " Rhine gorge," which furnishes the most beau- 
tiful scenery on the river. The banks of the stream become more 
precipitous and rocky, affording secure frontiers for the feudal 
chiefs that fortified themselves upon them. Ruined castles — gaping 
towers — dilapidated fortresses, begin to crowd with almost start- 
ling rapidity on the beholder. As the boat flies ^long on the swift 



118 CASTLES OF THE RHINE. 

current of the stream he has scarcely time to read the history and 
traditions of one, before another claims his attention. Placed in 
every variety of position, and presenting memorials of almost eve- 
ry century, they keep the imagination in constant activity. The 
castles of Falkenburg perched on its rocky eminence ; Reichenstein 
and Rheinstein, a little lower down, are grouped together in one 
coup d'azil, while the falling turrets of Sonneck rush to meet you 
from below, and the castle of Heimberg frowns over the village at 
its feet. Next comes old Furstenberg with its round tower and 
crumbling walls, and then Nottingen, and after it the massive 
fragments of Stahleck castle, looking gloomily down from the 
heights of Bacharach. While I was thus casting my eyes, first 
on one side, and then the other, of the river, as these, to me new 
and strange objects, came and went on my vision, suddenly from 
out the centre of the river rose the castle of Pfalz. We had 
scarcely passed it before the batt ements of Gutenfels appeared, 
and soon after the rock-founded castle of Schaen&erg. Tradition 
says that it received the name of Beautiful Hill from seven beau- 
tiful daughters of one of the old chieftains. Though beloved and 
sought for by all the young knights far and near, they turned a 
deaf ear to every suitor, and finally, for their hardheartedness, 
were turned into seven rocks, which still remain, a solemn warn- 
ing to all beautiful and heartless coquets to remotest time, At 
length, just above St. Goar, the black and naked precipice of Lur- 
leiberg rose out of the water on the left, frowning in savage si- 
lence over the river. Just before we came opposite this perpen- 
dicular rock, the boat entered a rapid, formed by the immense 
rocks in the bed of the stream, and began to shoot dewnward like 
an arrow to an immense whirlpool in front of the Lurleiberg. 
The river here striking the rocks, and dashing back towards the 
opposite side, forms a whirlpool, called by the inhabitants the 
Gewirr ; into the furious eddy of which our little steamboat dashed 
without fear. She careened a little one side as she passed along 
the slope of the Wirbel, probably tipped over by the beautiful, 
though evil-minded, water nymph — the Circe of the Rhine — who 
used to beguile poor ignorant boatmen by her ravishing voice into 
the boiling eddies, where she deliberately drowned them. Unable 
to charm the steam-engine, which goes snorting in the most unpo- 



SINGULAR ECHO. 119 



etical and daring mariner through all the meshes she weaves with 
her whirlpool, she revenges herself by putting her ivory shoulder 
against the keel of the boat as it passes, and exerting all her 
strength gives it a slight tip over, just to show that she still occupies 
her realm. 

I was struck here with one of those exhibitions of the love of 
the picturesque and beautiful which meets the traveller at almost 
every step on the Continent. There is a grotto under the Lurlei- 
berg where the echo of a bugle blast or pistol shot is said to be 
repeated fifteen times. As we approached it, I heard first the ex- 
plosion of a gun, and then the strains of a bugle. I did not know 
at first what it meant, and was much amused when I was told, on 
inquiring, that a man was kept stationed there, whose sole busi- 
ness was to fire guns and blow his bugle for the benefit of travel- 
lers. This making a business of getting up echoes looks odd to 
an American. A man thus stationed on the Hudson to rouse 
echoes for every boat that passed, would have a great many jokes 
cracked at his expense. I should have been better pleased with 
this arrangement, however, had I derived any benefit from it. Be- 
tween the crushing sound of the water, as it swept in swift circles 
around the boat, and the churning of the steam-engine, I did not 
get even a single echo. I heard only the explosion of the gun, 
and the fitful, uncertain strains of the bugle— the echoes the steam- 
boat and whirlpool had all to themselves. 

We had scarcely passed the base of this precipice before the 
ruins of the fortress of Rheinfels emerged into view. This is the 
largest ruin on the river, and witnessed bloody work in olden 
times, as its stern lord levied duties on every traveller up the 
Rhine. It was the impregnable character of this fortification 
which helped bring about the Hanseatic League. It was blown 
up by the revolutionary army of France, and has remained a 
ruin ever since. Next comes the Thurmberg, or castle of the 
mouse, a ruin in a more perfect state of preservation than any 
other on the Rhine. It wants only the wood-work to render it 
entire. A little lower down rises the old convent of Bornhofen, 
and the twin castles of Sternberg and Liebenstein, presenting a 
most singular, yet charming, feature in the landscape. Still 
farther down, and lo, the noble castle of Marksburg, perched on 



120 CASTLE OF STALZENFELS. 

the top of a cone-like rock, looking silently down on the little 
village of Branbach, at the base, burst on my sight. This old 
castle stands just as it did in the middle ages, with all its secret, 
narrow passages, winding staircases, dungeons, and instruments 
of torture, preserved through the slow lapse of centuries. The 
castle of Lahneck comes next, and last of all, before reaching 
Coblentz, the fine old castle of Stalzenfels. It stands on a rock in 
the most picturesque position imaginable. It had lain in ruins 
since the French destroyed it, nearly two hundred years ago ; 
but the town of Coblentz having presented it to the Crown Prince 
of Prussia, he is slowly repairing it after the ancient model. He 
devotes an annual sum to the repairs, and it already shows what 
a beautiful structure it must have been originally. The gift on 
the part of Coblentz was no great affair, as they had already 
offered it for fifty-three dollars, and could find nobody to buy it at 
that price. The old castles on the Rhine follow the laws of trade 
- — the price always corresponds to the demand. But here the 
castle-market is glutted, and hence the sales are light. 

One cannot easily imagine the effect of these turreted ruins, 
suddenly bursting on one at every turn of the river. The whole 
distance from Mayence to Coblentz is less than sixty miles, and 
yet one passes all these old castles in sailing over it. But these 
castles are not all that charm the beholder. There are ruined 
convents and churches — smiling villages, sweet vineyards — bare 
precipices and garden-like shores, all coming and going like the 
objects in a moving diorama, keeping up a succession of sur- 
prises that prevents one effectually from calling up the associa- 
tions of any one particular scene. 



BONAPARTE AND THE RUSSIANS. 121 



XXIII. 

THE RHINE FROM COBLENTZ TO COLOGNE. 



Coblentz is one of the most picturesque towns I have ever 
seen. Its position on the Rhine seems chosen on purpose for 
effect. One of the most interesting objects in it is the rock and 
fortress of Ehrenbreitstein, which commands a glorious view of 
the junction of the Rhine and Mosel, and w T hich, from its impreg- 
nable position, is called the Gibraltar of the Rhine. It will hold 
a garrison of 14,000 men, while the magazines will contain pro- 
visions sufficient to maintain eight thousand men for ten years. 
The escarped rocks on three sides would repel almost any assault, 
and the fortress can easily sustain the glorious name it gained in the 
seventeenth century, when assailed in vain by the French armies. 
The name signifies " honour's broadstone." There is a convent 
of Jesuits in the town, with such ample wine cellars that a stage 
coach could drive around in them, and which have held nearly a 
half a million of bottles of wine. In the public square is a foun- 
tain, erected as a monument, by the French, in 1812, on which 
was chiselled an inscription, to commemorate their invasion of 
Russia. A few months after, the fragments of the Grand Army 
were driven over the Rhine. Over the fallen host the Russians 
had marched in triumph, and pressing fast on the flying traces of 
Bonaparte, entered this town on their march for Paris. The 
Russian commander,, seeing this monument, instead of having it 
destroyed, caused to be cut under the French inscription, " Vu et 
approuve par nous, commandant Russe, de la ville Coblence, Jan- 
vier l er , 1814. This is rather a hard hit on the French, and 
shows that St. Priest had more contempt than hate in his compo- 
sition. Here, too, sleeps the brave and noble Marceau, who fell 



122 GRAVE OF MARCEAU. 

in the hotly fought battle of Altenkirchen. Byron expressed the 
feelings of both friends and foes when he sung 

" Brief, brave and glorious was his young career — 

His mourners were two hosts, his friends and foes ; 

And fitly may the stranger lingering here 

Pray for his gallant spirit's bright repose, 

For he was Freedom's champion, one of those, 

The few in number, who had not o'erstept 

The charter to chastise which she bestows 

Ot such as wield her weapons ; he had kept 
The whiteness of his soul, and thus men o'er him wept." 

We had scarcely shoved away from the wharf at Coblentz 
before castles, which seemed to have dropped down the river 
during our stop, began to rise along the shores. The Crane, 
built nearly three hundred years ago, and just below it the Watch 
Tower of older date, round below and eight-sided above, present 
a most picturesque appearance. Farther down rises the castle 
of Rheineck, with the castellated building beside it looking like 
the residence of some old feudal chief, in the heyday of his pow- 
er. Farther down still, after the Ahr has poured its silver stream 
into the Rhine, appear the black precipices of Erpeler Lei, seven 
hundred feet high. At first view this immense basaltic rock 
seems perfectly inaccessible, but the vintager has converted it 
into a vineyard. In the crevices, all along the face of the preci- 
pice, are placed baskets filled with earth, in which are planted 
vines, that creep up and cling to the rock, covering it with ver- 
dure and fruit. Opposite the village of Unkel is another basaltic 
rock, rising in columns from the water. The Rhine raves past it 
as if conscious that the long, dull sweep of the Lowlands was be- 
low, and it must foam and rave while it could. 

The Tower of Roland comes next, and after it the ruins of 
seven castles, on seven different mountains, the remains of the 
seats of the Archbishops of Cologne. A little farther on, and 
lo, the Rhine goes in one broad sweep of twenty miles to Cologne, 
sparkling under the summer sky, and rejoicing in the wealth of 
villages and vineyards, and cultivated fields along its shores. 
The view here is glorious, and I was tempted to echo the shout of 
the Prussian army, " The Rhine ! The Rhine !" Up the river 



THE SEVEN HILLS. 123 



the rocks shut in the prospect, as if endeavouring to restrain the 
stream, and look savage and gloomy upon the liberated waters 
that leap away without farther restraint, for the open country 
below. Unlike the Hudson, which goes in one broad steady 
sweep from Albany to New York, the Rhine is tortuous and un- 
steady ; now spreading out into a lake filled with islands, now 
smoothly laving the richly cultivated banks, and now dashing on 
the rocks that push into its channel, till its vexed waters boil in 
frenzy — and now gliding arrow-like past some old castle, that 
seems watching its movements. The natural scenery along its 
course is greatly inferior to that of the Hudson, but the accesso- 
ries of vineyards, and villages, and convents, and churches, and 
castles, and towers; and the associations around them all; make the 
passage up or down it one of the most interesting in the world, 
in the beauty and variety it presents. 

The seven hills, " Siebengebirge" I mentioned above, are the 
lower terminations of the grand scenery on the Rhine. These 
"seven hills" (there are more than seven), crowned with their 
ruined castles, form a scene that can scarcely be surpassed. 
They have all been thrown up by some volcano, that lived, and 
worked, and died here, before man had a written history ; and 
rise in magnificent proportions along the banks of the rushing 
river. The Lowenberg, 1414 feet high ; the Wolkenberg, 1067 ; 
the Drachenfels (dragon's rock), 1056 ; the Oelberg, 1473 ; the 
Niederstromberg, 1066 ; and the Stromberg, 1053 feet in height, 
surmounted by ruined battlements, towers, &c, are a glorious 
brotherhood, and worthy of the Rhine, on which they look. I 
will not give the traditions connected with many of these, nor 
add the particular descriptions and aspect of each.. The impres- 
sion they make on one he carries with him through life. Espe- 
cially does an American, whose eye has roamed over primeval 
forests, broad rivers, and lofty mountains ; left just as the hand of 
nature formed them, gaze with curious feelings on this blending 
of precipices, and castles, and mountains, and ruins, together. 
Nature looks old in such connection — a sort of bondslave to man, 
bereft of her pride and freedom, and robbed of her freshness and 
life. 

Drachenfels rises almost perpendicularly to the view from the 



124 DRACHENFELS. 



river shore, with a cap of ruins on its lofty head. Byron has im- 
mortalized this rock in language so sweet that I risk the complaint 
of quoting too much, and give the three following beautiful verses. 

The castled crag of Drachenfels 
Frown o'er the wide and winding Rhine, 
Whose breast of waters broadly swells 
Between the. banks which bear the vine, 
And hills all rich with blossom'd trees, 
And fields which promise corn and wine, 
And scattered cities crowning these, 
Whose far white walls along them shine, - 
Have strewed a scene which I could see 
With double joy wert thou with me. 

And peasant girls with deep blue eyes, 
And hands which offer early flowers, 
Walk smiling o'er this paradise ; 
Above, the frequent feudal towers 
Through green leaves lift their walls of grey, 
And many a rock which steeply towers, 
And noble arch in proud decay, 
- Look o'er this vale of vintage -bowers ; 
But one thing want these banks of Rhine, — 
Thy gentle hand to clasp in mine ! 

Tbe river nobly foams and flows, 

The charm of this enchanted ground, 

And all its thousand turns disclose 

Some fresher beauty varying round, 

The haughtiest breast its wish might bound 

Through life to dwell delighted here ; 

Nor could on earth a spot be found 

To nature and to me so dear, 

Could thy dear eyes in following mine 

Still sweeten more these banks of Rhine." 

Passing Bonn, with its University, Cathedral, dec, rapidly as 
steam and the downward current together could bear us, we were 
soon under the white walls of Cologne. Here I lost sight of 
two fellow travellers that had added much to my pleasure , 
down the Rhine. It had so happened that we wished to stop at 
the same places, t and had thus kept company from Frankfort to 



FRENCH LADIES. 125 



Cologne. Thev were two ladies that had attracted my attention 
when they got on board at Mayence. One was an elderly lady, 
and the other young and beautiful. 

Sitting near them soon after we started, the elderly lady ad- 
dressed some inquiry to me respecting the boat, which I answered 
in the fewest words possible, for I perceived they were French, 
and I was nervous about speaking to them in their own language. 

As the day advanced I was struck with the familiarity exhib- 
ited by the passengers. A gentleman would address a lady be- 
side him, a perfect stranger, with some remark about the scenery, 
which she answered with the utmost cheerfulness, and there was 
a general freedom from restraint, and a confidence in each other's 
polite behaviour, the reverse of which makes our steamboat trav- 
elling like an assemblage of pickpockets, unacquainted with each, 
other, and suspicious of each other's designs. 

Seeing, not long after, a copy of one of Dickens's works in the 
younger lady's hand, I presumed to address her in English, which, 
to my delight, she spoke almost like an Englishwoman. There 
was an ease and grace in her manner, and her remarks were char- 
acterized by an intelligence and a knowledge of the world, that 
rendered her one of the most attractive persons I ever met. She 
was glad, she said, to converse in English, and I was glad to 
have her. I was a stranger and alone, and hence felt more deeply 
her kindness in thus conversing with me hour after hour. An 
American lady might think this vastly improper and forward, but 
,1 shall remember her with grateful feelings as long as I remem- 
ber the Rhine. 

She, with the elderly lady her companion, were to ascend the 
river in their carriage, which they took aboard at Cologne ; so as 
to get all the beauties of the scenery. 



• r 



126 COLOGNE CATHEDRAL. 



XXIV. 

RHINE WINES, COLOGNE CATHEDRAL, LOU- 
VAIN, BRUSSELS. 



I had designed to give a chapter on Rhine wines, and the vine- 
yards of the Rhine, but will pass them over, referring only to 
Prince Metternich's celebrated vineyard, just above Geissenheim, 
between Mayence and Coblentz. The monks formerly possessed 
this extensive vineyard, covering fifty-five acres. The Prince of 
Orange owned it next, and held it till it fell into Bonaparte's 
hand, who gave it to Marshal Kellerman, in reward for his ser- 
vices. At the close of Napoleon's career, it reverted to the Em- 
peror of Austria, who made a present of it to Metternich, the pres- 
ent owner. He has repaired it, and the Chateau of Johannesberg 
is now a very conspicuous object on the banks of the Rhine. The 
vineyard yields about forty butts of wine per annum, and it is 
called the best of the Rhenish wines. 

Cologne, independent of its sights, is an object of interest, from 
>he part it played in Roman history. A camp pitched here by 
Marcus Agrippa, was the first commencement of the city. Vitelli- 
us and Sylvanus were proclaimed emperors of Rome here, and 
here also Ag'rippina, the mother of Nero, was born. It retains, 
to this day, many of the peculiar customs of Italy, and is the only 
city in the north of Europe where the Carnival is celebrated. I 
will not speak of the paintings it contains, or of the architecture of 
the churches. The Cathedral, however, I will mention in passing. 
This magnificent building was begun six hundred years ago, and 
still remains not half completed. It is of Gothic architecture, and' 
had it been completed, would have been one of the finest edifices in 
the world. It was to have two towers, each five hundred feet, but 



DESCRIPTION OF THE CHOIR. 327 

they remain unfinished, and probably will to the end of time. 
The two things that interested me most were, the "Shrine of the 
three Kings of Cologne," and the Choir. The former is in a 
small chapel just behind the main altar, and is said to contain the 
bones of the three Magi who came from the East to lay their offer- 
ings at the feet of the infant Saviour. The names of these three 
wise men, the chronicle states, were Gaspar, Melchior, and Bah 
thaser; and, to prevent the possibility of a doubt, their names are 
written in rubies on their own skulls. This shrine, with its gold 
and silver and precious stones, is said to be worth over a million 
of dollars, although bereft of some of its choicest gems during the 
French Revolution. 

The choir is the only part of the church completely finished, 
and shows by its magnificence and splendour the extravagant de- 
signs of the first builders. I have never seen any thing more 
grand in its general plan and construction, and yet so exquisitely 
beautiful in its details, than this choir. I cannot give a better de- 
scription of it than in the language of an English traveller. " The 
choir is the only part finished ; one hundred and eighty feet high y 
and internally, from its size, height, and disposition of pillars, 
arches, chapels, and beautifully coloured windows, resembling a 
splendid vision. Externally, its double range of stupendous flying 
buttresses, and intervening piers, bristling with a forest of purflled 
pinnacles, strike the beholder with awe and astonishment." Long 
before reaching Cologne, the highest tower of the church is visible, 
with a huge crane swinging from its unfinished top, where it has 
hung for centuries. Some time since it was taken down by the 
city authorities, but a terrible thunder-storm which swept over 
the place soon after, was believed by the frightened inhabitants to 
be in consequence of their wickedness in removing this crane. It 
was saying to the world, " we never intend to finish this church;" 
a declaration which set the elements in suGn commotion, tha f soon 
after an awful black thunder-cloud began to show itself over the 
trembling city. The lightning crossed its fiery lances over head, 
and the redoubled thunder shook the very foundations on which 
the city stood. As soon, therefore, as it was over, and to prevent 
another similar, more awful visitation, the inhabitants began to 
hoist this enormous crane to its place on the top of the tower. I 



128 BONES OF ELEVEN THOUSAND VIRGINS. 

could not but laugh, as I saw its black outline against the sky, at 
the folly that had replaced it there. It was the most deliberate 
humbug practised on a large scale I had ever seen. It was like 
the Irishman vowing a hundred candle's to the Virgin Mary, if she 
would save him from shipwreck, when the vessel was breaking to 
pieces under him. Said his companion to him, " Why do you lie, 
for you know you can't get them ?" " Never mind," he replied, 
'• keep still, the Virgin don't know it." The Cologne people have 
acted like the Irishman in this respect — they have no idea of fin- 
ishing the church, though a hundred thunder-storms should sweep 
over the city ; but they seem to think that if the crane is up ready 
for hoisting stone, the Deity will not know it. If they only look 
grave, say nothing, and keep the crane swinging, they imagine 
the blessed Virgin will believe they design to commence building 
soon. 

Cologne is not so dirty as Coleridge makes it out to be, though 
it is a very disagreeable town to get around in. I will mention 
but one thing more in it — the Church of St. Ursula. It stands 
just without the walls, and is remarkable only for containing the 
bones and skulls of eleven thousand virgins, all slain in one great 
massacre. This is a large allowance even for a Roman Catholic 
tradition, which does not generally stick at improbabilities. It 
seems this St. Ursula, of blessed memory, in carrying her un- 
usual quantity of virgins from Britain to Armorica,was driven by 
tempests up the Rhine to Cologne, where the Huns, in their bar- 
barian fury, slew them all, because they would not yield to their 
lusts. To say nothing of this singularly large fleet of virgins, it 
is very curious they should be driven, by a week or more of tem- 
pests, through the Lowlands, up the Rhine to Cologne, without 
having once got aground or sent high and dry ashore. I will 
not, however, dispute the legend, especially as I saw several ter- 
races of the bones themselves, or at least of veritable bones, ranged 
round the church between the walls. The skull of St. Ursula, 
with a few select ones, probably belonging to her body-guard, 
have a separate apartment, called the Golden Chamber, and are. 
encased in silver. But, seriously, I cannot divine what first in- 
duced this grand collection of skeletons, and their peculiar ar- 
rangement for public exhibition. It looks as if some battle-field 



AN IGNORANT ENGLISHMAN. 123 

had been robbed of its slain in order to furnish this cabinet of hide 
ous relics. 

I went by rail-road from Cologne to Aix la Chapelle (forty- 
three miles), and stopping there only long enough to get break, 
fast, found no time to see the town. • The rail-road is not yet 
finished from it to Liege, and travellers are compelled to go by 
diligence. The distance is about twenty-six miles ; and having 
an unconquerable dislike to diligence travelling, I determined to 
hire a carnage. An English gentleman, standing at the door as 
I was inquiring about the terms, &c, said he should like to take a 
carriage with me. I gladly accepted his proposal, and we started 
off in company. I mention this incident to illustrate an English- 
man's ignorance of the United States. I had heard some of our 
most distinguished writers, male and female, speak of it in their 
encounters with the English in their own country, but had never 
met any marked case of it myself. But this man, who spent 
every summer on the Continent, knew no more of the American 
Republic than an idiot. Among other things exhibiting his ig- 
norance; in reply to my statement that I was from New York, he 
said, " New York — let me see — does that belong to the Canadas 
yet ?" I told him I believed not ; that it was my impression it 
had been separated from it for some time. " Ah !" said he, and 
that ended his inquiries on that point. It was equal to the re- 
mark of an English literary lady once to one of my own distin- 
guished countrywomen. In speaking of the favourable features 
of the United States, she remarked very naively, that she should 
think the climate would be very cool in summer, from the wind 
blowing over the Cordilleras mountains ! 

The view of Liege, from the heights, as we began to descend 
into the valley, was quite a novel one for the Continent. The 
long chimneys of the numerous manufactories reminded me of 
the activity and enterprise of my own land. I did not go over 
the town, but took the rail-road for Louvain, on my way to Brus- 
sels. I just gave one thought to Quintin Durward and the " Wild 
Boar of Ardennes," and we were away with the speed of the wind. 
I stopped at Louvain solely to visit the beautiful Gothic building 
of the Hotel de Ville. It is said to be the most beautiful Gothic 
edifice in the world. The whole exterior, in almost every foot of 

10 



130 PARK OF BRUSSELS. 

it, is elaborately wrought. Bassi relievi cover it — many of them 
representing sins and their punishments. The stone of which it 
is composed is soft when first quarried, and hence is easily worked, 
but it hardens by exposure to the air. 

The next morning I started for Brussels. There is an airiness 
and cheerfulness about this city that pleased me exceedingly, and 
I should think a residence in it, for a part of the year, would be 
delightful. The impression I got of it, however, may be owing to 
the position of the hotel at which I stopped. Situated on an emi- 
nence near the park, the traveller may be in a few moments 
strolling through beautiful grounds, thronged with promenaders as 
gay as those of the Champs Elysee and the Tuileries. 



WATERLOO. , 13l 



XXV. 

BATTLE-FIELD OF WATERLOO, 



The sky was darkly overcast, and not a breath of air disturbed 
the ominous hush of the atmosphere, which always precedes a 
rain, as we started for the greatest battle-field of Europe. My 
companions were an American, and an English cavalry captain, 
just returned from the Indies. We had previously been shown 
the house in which the ball was held the night before the battle. 
I could imagine the sudden check to the "sound of revelry," when 
over the exciting notes of the viol, came the dull booming of can- 
non, striking on the youthful heart "like a rising knell." 

" Ah ! then and there was hurrying to and fro, 
And gathering tears, and tremblings of distress, 
And cheeks all pale which but an hour ago 
Brushed at the praise of their own loveliness ; 
And sudden partings, such as press 
The life from out young hearts, and choking sighs 
Which ne'er might be repeated." 

We followed the route taken by Wellington and his suite from 
Brussels, and trotting through the forest of Soignies, which Byron, 
by poetical license, has called the forest of Ardennes ; came upon 
the little hamlet of Waterloo, situated a short distance from the 
field of battle. Our guide was a man who lived in the village at 
the time of the battle, and had been familiar with all its local- 
ities for years. 

I have trod many battle-fields of ancient and modern glory, but 
never one with the strange feelings with which I wandered over 
this, for here the star of Bonaparte set forever. To understand the 



132 NIGHT BEFORE THE BATTLE. 

description, imagine two slightly elevated semicircular ridges, or, 
as they might more properly be termed, slopes, curving gently 
towards each other like a parenthesis, and you have the portion 
of the two armies. On the summit of one of these slopes was ar- 
rayed the French army, and on the other the English. The night 
of the 17th of June was dark and stormy. The rain feil in tor- 
rents, and the two armies lay down in the tall rye drenched and 
cold to wait the morning that was to decide the fate of Europe 
and of Napoleon. From the ball-room at Brussels many an of- 
ficer had been summoned in haste to the field, and shivering and 
wet, was compelled to pass the night in mud and rain in his ele- 
gant attire. The artillery had cut up the ground so that the mire 
was shoe deep, while the tall grain lay crushed and matted beneath, 
the feet of the soldiers. The morning of the 18th opened with a 
drizzling rain, and the two armies, benumbed with cold and soak- 
ing wet, rose from their damp beds to the contest. Eighty thou- 
sand French soldiers were seen moving in magnificent array on 
the crest of the ridge, as they took their several positions for the 
day. Upward of seventy thousand of the allied forces occu- 
pied the ridge or eminences opposite them, — formed mostly into 
squares. 

In a moment the battle was all before me. I could almost see 
Bonaparte as, after having disposed his forces, and flushed with 
hope, he gaily exclaimed to his suite, " now to breakfast,' 1 and 
galloped away. The shout of " Vive l'Empereur" that followed 
shook the very field on which they stood, and seemed ominous 
of disaster to the allied army. Two hundred and sixty-two can- 
non lined the ridge like a wall of death before the French, while 
Wellington had but one hundred and eighty-six to oppose them. 
At eleven the firing commenced, and immediately Jerome Bona- 
parte led a column of six thousand men down on Hougoumont, an 
old chateau which defended Wellington's right, and was good as 
a fort. Advancing in the face of the most desti uctivefire, that gal- 
lant column pushed up to the very walls of the chateau, and thrust 
their bayonets through the door. But it was all in vain ; and, 
though the building was set on fire and consumed, and the roar- 
ing of the flames was mingled with the shrieks of the wounded 
that were perishing in it, the rage of the combatants only increas- 



COMMENCEMENT OF THE BATTLE. 133 

ed. The Coldstream Guards held the court-yard with invinci- 
ble obstinacy, and Jerome Bonaparte was compelled to retire, af- 
ter leaving 1,400 men in a little orchard beside the walls, where 
it does not seem so many men could be laid. In a short time the 
battle became general along the whole lines, and prodigies of 
valour were performed on every rod of the ensanguined field. 
The heavy French cavalry came thundering down on the stead)' - 
English squares, that had already been wasted by the destructive 
artillery, and strove with almost superhuman energy to break them. 
Driven to desperation by their repeatedly foiled attempts, they at 
length stopped their horses and coolly walked them round and 
round the squares, and wherever a man fell dashed in, in vain val- 
our. But when one of those rock-fast squares began to waver, 
Wellington threw himself into its centre, and it again became 
immoveable as a mountain. With their gallant chief in their 
keeping those brave British hearts could not yield. Whole col- 
umns went down like frost-work before the headlong charges of 
cavalry and infantry. In the centre the conflict at length be- 
came, awful, for there the crisis of the battle was fixed. Welling- 
ton stood under a tree while the boughs were crashing with the 
cannon shot over head, and nearly his whole guard smitten down 
by his side, anxiously watching the progress of the fight. His 
brave squares, torn into fragments by bombs and ricochet shot, 
still refused to yield one foot of ground. Napoleon rode through 
his ranks, cheering on the exhausted columns of infantry and 
cavalry, that rent the heavens with the shout of " Vive VEmpe- 
reur" and dashed with unparalleled recklessness on the bayonets 
of the English. 

The hero of Wagram, and Borodino, and Austerlitz. and 
Marengo, and Jena, enraged at the stubborn obstinacy of the 
British, rages over the field, and is still sure of victory. Welling- 
ton, seeing that he cannot much longer sustain the desperate 
charges of the French battalions, wipes the sweat from his anx- 
ious forehead and exclaims. "Oh, that Blucher or night would 
come." Thus from eleven till four did the battle rage with san- 
guinary ferocity, and still around the centre it grew more awful 
every moment. The mangled cavalry staggered up to the ex- 
hausted British squares, which, though diminished and bleed in o 

is 



134 ARRIVAL OF BLUCHER. 

in every part, seemed rooted to the ground they stood upon. The 
heroic Picton had fallen at the head of his brigade, while his sword 
was flashing over his head. Ponsonby had gone down on the 
hard fought field, and terror and slaughter were on every side. 
The most enthusiastic courage had driven on the French troops, 
which the rock-fast resolution of British hearts alone could 
resist. The charge of the French cavalry on the centre was 
awful. Disregarding the close and murderous fire of the British 
batteries, they rode steadily forward till they came to the bayonet's 
point. Prodigies of valour were wrought, and Heroes fell at 
every discharge. Bonaparte's star now blazed forth in its an- 
cient splendour, and now trembled in the zenith. The shadows 
of fugitive kings flitted through the smoke of battle, and thrones 
tottered on the ensanguined field. At length a dark object was 
seen to emerge from the distant wood; and soon an army of 30,000 
men deployed into the field, and began to march straight for the 
scene of conflict. Blucher and his Prussians came, but no 
Grouchy, who had been left to hold him in check, followed after. 
In a moment Napoleon saw that he could not sustain the charge 
of so many fresh troops, if once allowed to form a junction with 
the allied forces, and so he determined to stake his fate on one 
bold cast, and endeavour to pierce the allied centre with one grand 
charge of the Old Guard, and thus throw himself between the 
two armies, and fight them separately. For this purpose the 
Imperial Guard was called up, which had remained inactive 
during the whole day, and divided into two immense columns, 
which were to meet at the British centre. That under Reille 
no sooner entered the fire than it disappeared like frost-work. 
The other was placed under Ney, the " bravest of the brave," 
and the most irresistible of all Napoleon's Marshals. Napoleon 
accompanied them part way down the slope, and halting for a 
moment in a hollow, addressed them in his fiery, impetuous man- 
ner. He told them the battle rested with them. " Vive V Em* 
pereur" answered him with a shout that was heard all over the 
field of battle. Ney then placed himself at their head, and began 
to move down the slope and over the field. No drum or trumpet 
or martial strain cheered them on. They needed nothing to fire 
their steady courage. The eyes of the world were on them, and 



LAST CHARGE OF THE ,OLD GUARD. 135 

the fate of Europe in their hands. The muffled tread of that 
magnificent legion alone was heard. For a moment the firing 
ceased along the British lines. The terror of Europe was on the 
march, and the last awful charge of the Imperial Guard, which had 
never yet failed, was about to be made. The crisis had come, 
the hour of destiny arrived, and Napoleon saw, with anxious eye, 
his Empire carried by that awful column as it disappeared in the 
smoke of battle. The firing ceased only for an instant ; the next 
moment the artillery opened, and that dense array was rent as if 
a hurricane had passed through it. Ney's horse sunk under 
him, and he mounted another and cheered on his men. Without 
wavering or halting that band of heroes closed up their shattered 
ranks, and moved on in the face of the most wasting fire that ever 
swept a field of battle. Again and again did Ney's horse sink 
under him, till five had fallen; and then on foot, with his drawn 
sabre in his hand, he marched at the head of his column. On, 
on, like the inrolling tide of the sea, that dauntless Guard pressed 
up to the very mouth of the cannon, and taking their fiery load 
full in their bosoms — walked over artillery, cannoniers and all, 
and pushed on through the British lines till they came within a 
few feet of where Wellington stood. The day seemed lost to the 
allies, when a rank of men, who had lain flat on their faces behind 
a low ridge of earth, and hitherto unseen by the French, heard 
the order of Wellington, " up and at 'em !" and springing to their 
feet, poured an unexpected volley into the very faces of that 
advancing Guard. Taken by surprise, and smitten back by the 
sudden shock, they had not time to rally before another and an- 
other volley completed the disorder, and that hitherto unconquer- 
able Guard was hurrying in wild confusion over the field. " The 
Guard recoils !" " the Guard recoils !" rung in despairing shrieks 
over the army, and all was over. Blucher effected his junction, 
and Wellington ordered a simultaneous advance along the whole 
line. The Old Guard, disdaining to fly, formed into two immense 
squares, and attempted to stay the reversed tide of battle. They 
stood and let the artillery plough through them in vain. The 
day was lost. Bonaparte's star had set forever, and his empire 
crumbled beneath him. 

Wellington met Blucher at La Belle Alliance, the head-quar- 



136 NIGHT AFTER THE BATTLE. 

ters of Napoleon. The former returned back over the field, while 
the latter continued the pursuit all night long, strewing the road 
for thirty miles with mangled corpses. 

And I was standing on this awful field, waving with grain just 
as it did on that mild morning. As my eye rested on this and 
that spot, where deeds of valour were done, and saw in imagina- 
tion those magnificent armies struggling for a continent, and heard 
the roar of cannon, the shocks of cavalry and the rolling fire of 
infantry, and saw the waving of plumes and torn banners amid 
the smoke of battle that curtained them in ; what wonder is it that 
for the moment I forgot the carnage and the awful waste of hu- 
man life in the excitement and grandeur of the scene ? But let 
him who is in love with glory go over the bloody field after the 
thunder of battle is hushed, and the excitement of the strife is over. 
The rain is past, the heavy clouds have melted away, and behold 
the bright and tranquil moon is sailing through the starry heavens 
and looking serenely down on the bloody field. Under its re- 
proving light you see flashing swords, and glittering uniforms, 
and torn plumes, and heaps of mangled men. More than 50,000 
cumber the field, while thousands of wounded hordes, still alive, 
rend the air with their shrill cries ; and at intervals break in the 
mingled curse and groan and prayer of the tens of thousands that 
are writhing amid the slaughtered heaps in mortal agony. Dis- 
membered limbs are scattered round like broken branches after a 
hurricane, while disembowelled corpses lie like autumn leaves on 
every side. Ghastly wounds greet the eye at every turn, while 
ever and anon comes the thunder of distant cannon on the night 
air, telling where Blucher still continues the work of destruction. 

And the bright round moon is shining down on all this, and the 
sweet air of June is breathing over it. Oh ! what a scene for 
God and angels to look upon ! What a blot on Nature's pure 
bosom ! Even Wellington, as h*e slowly rode over the field by 
moonlight, wept. The heart trained in the camp and schooled in 
the brutal life of the soldier could not endure the sight. But this 
is not all. Mournful as is the spectacle, and terrific as is the 
ghastly sight of that dead and dying army, and heartrending as 
are the shrieks and groans and blasphemies that make night hor- 
rible; the field is alive with moving forms, stooping over the pros- 



MONUMENTS OF THE DEAD. 137 

trate dead. Are they ministers of mercy come hither to bind up 
the wounded and assuage their sufferings, or are they beasts of 
prey stooping over the carcasses still warm with human blood ? 
Neither. They are men roaming the field for plunder. The 
dead and the wounded are alike ruthlessly trampled upon, as 
their bloody garments are rifled of their treasures. And this is 
glorious war, where heroes are made and deified ! As my im- 
agination rested on this picture, I no longer felt sympathy for Na- 
poleon, as he fled a fugitive through the long night, while the roar 
of cannon behind him told where his empire lay trampled to the 
earth. 

But the suffering did not end here. To measure the amount 
of woe this one battle produced, go to the villages and cottages 
of France and England and Prussia. Count all the broken 
hearts it made — trace out the secret and open suffering that ends 
not with the day that saw its birth — and, last of all, go on to the 
judgment and imagine the souls that went from Waterloo and its 
fierce conflict to the rewards of Eternity ; and then measure, if 
you can, the length and breadth and depth and height of that 
cursed ambition which made Napoleon a minister of death to his 
race. His wild heart sleeps at last, and Nature smiles again 
around Waterloo, and the rich grain waves as carelessly as if . 
nothing had happened. That Providence which never sleeps fix- 
ed the limits of that proud man, and finally left the " desolator 
desolate" to eat out his own heart on the rock of Helena. 
' The field is covered with monuments to the dead, and a huge 
pyramid, surmounted by a lion, rises from the centre of the plain. 
One monument tells where the Scotch Greys stood and were cut 
down, almost to a man — another points to the grave of Shaw, who 
killed nine Frenchmen before he fell. The little church in the 
village of Waterloo is filled with tablets commemorating the dead. 
One struck me forcibly. On it was recorded the death of a man 
belonging to Wellington's suite. He was only eighteen years of 
age, and this was his twentieth battle. I never was more im- 
pressed with the brutality of the soldier than when my guide 
told me that he himself went over the field in search of plunder, 
the morning after the battle, and all he could find among the thou- 
sands of corpses was one old silver watch. 



138 MARQUIS OF ANGLESEA'S LEG. 

My companion the English captain would go and see the grave 
of the Marquis of Anglesea's leg, which has a separate monument 
erected to it. The Marquis visited the field of battle a short 
time since, and had the pleasure of reading the epitaph of his own 
leg. Taking no particular interest in the Marquis's lower ex- 
tremities, whether off or on, I did not see this monument.* 

* It is perhaps unnecessary to state that I should nov) charge the crime and 
suffering of Waterloo, on European despots rather than to Bonaparte. 









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